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THE 


RUSSIANS 

AT THE 

GATES OF HERAT 


BY 

CHARLES MARVIN, 

A». 

AUTHOR OF “THE RUSSIAN ADVANCE TOWABDS INDIA,” “ MERV, THE 
QUEEN OF THE WORLD,” “ RECONNOITRING CENTRAL ASIA,” ETC. 


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS 



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C C C 








PE E FACE. 


-M- 

TV my “Russian Advance Towards India,” published in 
1882,1 made these remarks :—“ In my writings on Russia 
I try to be impartial. I know I have a greater love for Russia, 
the country of-my youth, and a better appreciation of the Rus¬ 
sian people, than the so-called ‘ Russophile ? traders in politics, 
who lauded her indiscriminately in 1877, from motives of self 
or party interest, and abandoned her afterwards to false attacks; 
and the public know, from my writings, that I am a vigilant 
and anxious observer of the Russian advance towards India. 
I am thus, I suppose, both a Russophile and a Russophobe. 
As for my local opinions, my youth was passed in a country 
which has no political parties corresponding with our Liberal 
and Conservative factions, and does not want them; while 
my studies have led me to survey politics from the standpoint 
of one who considers himself more in the light of a citizen 
of the English Empire—of that great empire that embraces the 
live empires of England, of Canada, of Australia, of South 
Africa, and of India—than merely a Liberal or Conservative 
Englishman of Lesser England only. Being, in this sense, an 
Imperialist, and a non-party writer, I claim immunity from 
any charge of unduly favouring Liberal or Conservative 
policy in my remarks on the Central Asian Question. At the 



11. 


PREFA CE. 


same time, I would have it with equal clearness understood, 
that the opinions expressed are not merely the heedless and 
ephemeral views of an irresponsible writer, but the deep con¬ 
viction of one who is conscious that they may some day be called 
up against him, in other spheres than that of Journalism and 
Literature.” 

These remarks cover all that I need say by way of a pre¬ 
face to the present volume, except that the entire work having 
been written and got out in eight days, I may ask indulgence 
for any errors that may have escaped my eye in the volume. 

CHARLES MARVIN. 


Grosvenor House, 

Plumstead Common, Kent, 
March 23rd, 1885. 


CONTENTS. 




PAGE 

CHAPTEE I. 

HOW ALIKHANOFF FIRST WENT TO MERV. 

The landing of tlie Russians at Krasnovodsk—Early Turcoman campaigns 
—Alikhanoff joins Lomakin’s army as a private soldier—Acts as 
special correspondent of the Moscow Gazette —Skobeleffs siege of 
Geop Tepe—Russia determines to secure a military survey of Merv— 
Alikhanoff proceeds to the oasis disguised as a trader—How he 
obtained plans of the fortress—Persuades Mahdum Ivuli, the principal 
Merv warrior, to attend the Tsar’s coronation at Moscow . . 1 

CHAPTEE II. 

THE SWOOP UPON MERV. 

Russia, angry at our continued occupation of Egypt, resolves to seize the 
gates of Herat—Secret concentration of troops at points commanding 
Merv—Colonel Muratoff goes to the Tegend oasis “to return,” but 
remains—Sudden appearance of Lieutenant Alikhanoff at Merv—The 
intrigues resulting in the acceptance of the Suzerainty of Russia— 
Russia promises to place only one officer in the oasis—Sudden advance 
of the Tejend force behind the Askabad deputation of chiefs—The 
Merv Tekkes hurriedly resist, but are defeated, and the Russians enter 
the fortress—Alikhanoff made governor of Merv .... 24 

CHAPTEE III. 

THE ADVANCE TO THE GATES OF HERAT. 

General Petrusevitch’s secret survey of Afghanistan in 1878— His suggestion 
that Russia, after occupying Merv, should insert a wedge between 
Herat and Meshed—Concentration of troops at Merv—General Koma- 
roff seizes Old Sarakhs—Alikhanoff s intrigues with the Sarik Turcomans 
—His attempt on Penjdeh—Lumsden finds the Russians advancing up 
the Hari Rud, and posted at Pul-i-Khatun—Russia delays the despatch 
of General Zelenoi in order to push further towards Herat—Occupation 
of the Zulfikar Pass, Ak Robat, and Pul-i-khisti .... 48 



ii. CONTENT ft 

PAfl-K 

CHAPTER IN. 

THE QUESTION OF THE BOUNDARIES. 

Russia’s claim to the gates of Herat—The original agreement between Eng¬ 
land and Russia as to the Afghan frontier—The disputed territory — 
Discrepancies in English official maps—The frontier generally recognized 
by the two countries—Skobeleff’s map of Merv and Herat, showing 
what Russia regarded as the frontier in 1881 —Lessar’s mission to 
London—The Russian claims impartially considered . . 79 

CHAPTER V. 

HOW HERAT IS THE KEY OF INDIA. 

Misconceptions respecting Herat — What Russian and English generals 
really mean when they call it the Key of India—The midway camping- 
ground between the Caspian and India—Russia’s intrusion on the 
camping-ground—Character of the country claimed or occupied by 
Russia—Impossibility of severing it from Herat—No mountain barrier 
whatever between Herat and the new Russian outposts—The tribes on 
the Russo-Afghan frontier—Russia’s design on Afghan Turkestan 96 

CHAPTER YI. 

skobeleff’s PLAN FOR THE INVASION OF INDIA. 

Skobeleff’s great aim in life—The solution of the Eastern Question on the 
Indian frontier—His plan for invading India in 1876— Adopted before 
the walls of Constantinople in 1878 —Kaufmann’s advance towards 
India—Great changes in Central Asia since—Were Skobeleff alive, his 
plan would be totally different now—What it would probably be — 
Feasibility of the invasion of India from the point of view of various 
Russian generals.123 


CHAPTER YII. 

THE RUSSIAN RAILWAY TO HERAT AND INDIA. 

The advance of the Russian locomotive—Immense changes it will occasion 
in Central Asia—Inevitable junction of the Indian and European rail¬ 
way systems via Candaliar and Herat—Only £4,000,000 needed to com¬ 
plete the link—Charing Cross to India in nine days—Statistics of the 
line.145 


CHAPTER VIII. 

THE FUTURE OF THE AFGHAN BARRIER. 

Impossibility of maintaining the Afghan barrier as it is—The Sepoy must 
confront the Cossack—The expansion of Russia—Will Russia let us 
garrison Herat ?—Skobeleff’s Afghan programme—England must herself 
organize the Afghan frontier and man it with troops . . . 15S 


THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 




CHAPTER I. 

HOW ALIKHANOFF FIRST WENT TO MERV. 

The landing of the Russians at Krasnovodsk—Early Turcoman campaigns 
—AlikhanofF joins Lomakin's army as a private soldier—Acts as 
special correspondent of the Moscow Gazette —Skobeleff’s siege of 
Geok Tepe—Russia determines to secure a military survey of Merv— 
Alikhanoff proceeds to the oasis disguised as a trader — How he 
obtained plans of the fortress—Persuades Mahdum Kuli, the principal 
Merv warrior, to attend the Tsar’s coronation at Moscow. 

T HERE are two Russian movements in tire direction of 
India. One originated at Orenburg, and had for its 
objective Cabul. Commencing before the Crimean war it 
rapidly developed itself afterwards, and engulfed in suc¬ 
cession the Kirghiz tribes and the khanates of Khokafid, 
Bokhara, and Khiva. Practically speaking, this movement 
ceased shortly before the last Turkish war, and has not been 
continued since. The interest in Turkestan for the moment, 
therefore, being purely historical, we may exclude an account 
of the advance in the direction of Cabul from this volume. 

The second movement was from the Caspian, and had for 
its objective Herat. A deal of confusion and bad statesman¬ 
ship has arisen from confounding this advance with that 
made from Orenburg and Tashkent. The troops have been 
always different, the officials different, and conditions regu¬ 
lating the advance different. We have only to specify one 
popular error to show how essential it is that the public 

1 



2 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT, 


should clearly realize the difference between the two move¬ 
ments. For instance, it is often said that colossal mountain 
ranges bar the Russian advance to the Indian frontier. This 
is quite true as regards troops marching from Tashkent and 
Samarcand upon Cabul and Peshawur. The lofty Hindoo 
Koosh, that must be traversed to reach the Ameer’s capital., 
ranges in height from 15,000 to 20,000 feet. Rut there is 
nothing of the kind between the Caspian and Herat, nor yet 
again between Herat and the Indo-Afghan frontier. Setting 
out from Krasnovodsk, a Russian could drive a four-in-hand 
all the way to the Indian frontier near Quetta. 

If this fact be clearly borne in mind, the reader will 
readily understand why the Russian advance has been so rapid 
since Skobeleff broke down the Turcoman barrier, and will 
appreciate how essential it is that the disadvantage of there 
being no physical obstacle to a powerful military movement 
from the Caspian should not be enhanced by allowing Russia 
to secure the great midway camping ground of Herat. 

In the time of Peter the Great, and again in the reign of 
Nicholas, Russia seized points on the East Caspian Coast, 
but the so-called Caspian advance towards India did not 
definitely commence until a descent was made upon Krasno¬ 
vodsk in 1869. In the autumn of that year a flotilla left 
the Caucasus port of Petrovsk, and landed on the opposite 
side of the Caspian a few Cossacks and infantrymen, and 
half a dozen guns. Attached to this expedition were three 
men who subsequently figured prominently in Central Asian 
history. One was Stolietoff, the envoy Russia sent to Cabul 
in 1878, the second Grodekoff, who made a famous ride to 
Herat in the same year, and the third Captain Skobeleff, 
then a harum-scarum subaltern. 

“We made a great mistake when we landed at Krasno¬ 
vodsk,” said the latter to me, shortly before his death. 
♦‘Instead of going ahead we dawdled about, reconnoitring 


HOW ALIKE A NOFF FIRST WENT TO MERV. 3 


the country. A strong, forward movement was not approved 
of by the Government. The result was, we gradually taught 
the Turcomans how to fight, and at last they fought so well 
that it needed a series of great campaigns to crush them.” 

Our space is too limited to describe in detail those recon¬ 
noitrings and skirmishes which, during the period from 1869 
to 1878, converted the Tekke Turcoman from an undis¬ 
ciplined horseman into a skilful builder of big redoubts. No 
headway whatever was made after Skobeleff left in 1873 to 
join the expedition to Khiva, and a long series of reverses 
culminated in a crushing defeat and rout of the Russians at 
Geok Tep6 in the autumn of 1879. 

This was the campaign in which two notable personages 
participated — Mr. Edmund O’Donovan, and Private Ali- 
khanoff. The former was attached to General Lazareff’s force, 
and spent the whole of the summer in the Caspian. Un¬ 
luckily he fell ill when the advance tooE place, and was thus 
debarred from seeing anything of the fighting. What we 
know of the campaign is mainly derived from the letters of a • 
few Russians attached to the force. The best appeared in the 
columns of the Moscow Gazette , and were signed “Arsky.” 
The writer was Alikhanoff, the present Governor of Merv. # 

This Alikhanoff is a very remarkable man. He was bom 
at Baku, and by birth is a Daghestani. Russia’s Asiatic sub¬ 
jects have a happy way of identifying themselves with their 
masters, which our language renders impossible in the case of 
India—they turn their names into Russian ones, by placing 
an “off” (son) at the end of them. Alikhanoff is simply Ali 
Khan, with an “off” added to it. When Sir Peter Lumsden 
proceeded to the Afghan frontier, he took with him from 
London a very accomplished Indian official as interpreter 
also, curiously enough, one “ Ali Khan.” But England had 

* See “The Disastrous Russian Campaign against the Turcomans." 
London: W. H. Allen and Co., 1880. 


1—2 




4 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT 


failed to effect such a transformation with her Ali Khan as 
Russia has with hers. I saw him depart from Charing Cross, 
He was highly educated and thoroughly devoted to England; 
hut he had never thought of identifying himself with us by 
changing his name from Ali Khan into Mr. Alikhanson, or, 
better still, Mr. Alison. 

The case is totally different in Russia’s Asiatic provinces. 
The people not only identify themselves with the Russians, 
but the Russians identify themselves with the people. English¬ 
men would never think of placing their home army under a 
Sikh or a Mahratta, or permitting a Bengali to become a 
Cabinet Minister. An Indian has practically no career in 
England; on the other hand, every avenue in Russia is open 
to the Caucasian. The Armenian, Loris Melikoff, rose there 
to a position next to that of the Tsar. Generals Tergoukasoff 
and Lazareff, two other Asiatics, commanded Russian troops 
in the Turkish war of 1877-78, and when Alikhanoff accom¬ 
plished his famous raid upon Merv, the exploit was extolled as 
a Russian exploit, and not as the achievement of a mere 
native. 

Alikhanoff received a good education, and developed a re¬ 
markable talent for drawing. Skilful with pen and pencil, 
had he lived in England he would have doubtless become one 
of the foremost correspondents of the day. At an early age 
he entered the army, and after serving in the Khivan expedi¬ 
tion as a captain of the cavalry under Skobeleff, received the 
appointment of aide-de-camp to the Grand Duke Michael, 
Viceroy of the Caucasus. At the close of the Turkish war 
he suddenly fell into disgrace. A quarrel occurred between 
him and a superior officer, and he challenged him to fight a 
duel. The true particulars of this affair have never publicly 
transpired. Some say Alikhanoff was a boisterous officer, 
given to insulting people when in his cups; others that his 
superior officer was a scamp, hated by everybody in the regi- 


HOW ALIKIIANOFF FIRST WENT TO MERV. 5 


ment. Whichever story is correct, Aliklianoff was tried by 
court-martial, deprived of all his appointments and decora¬ 
tions, and reduced to the condition of a common soldier. 

“ You need to measure soldiers by a different standard from 
that which you apply to civilians,” said Skobeleff to the 
writer in 1882. “I have had much experience in warfare, 
and have found that the men who fight best are precisely 
those who are apt to be troublesome in time of peace. A 
government should be always very indulgent to its troops in 
time of peace. Those who are most difficult to deal with in 
time of peace often prove to be the best fighters in time of 
war.” 

Skobeleffs remarks referred to General Valentine Taken 
whom he characterised as our “one good general.” We were 
discussing the different modes of treating officers in disgrace 
adopted by England and Russia. In England we dismiss from 
the army an officer who has made a false step, and however 
good a man he may be professionally, he is practically lost to 
the country. In Russia, on the other hand, he is simply re- 
duced to the ranks, stripped of his titles* and sent to some 
frontier district in Asia to serve as a private soldier* Such a 
man naturally becomes a desperado, and forms capital material 
for leaders of the stamp of Skobeleff. In many cases they 
retrieve their reputation, and it is the custom, if they display 
extraordinary courage, or render any particular service, to re¬ 
store them at a stroke to their former position. This was 
done in the case of Aliklianoff, when he successfully accom¬ 
plished his swoop upon Merv. It is obvious that the pre* 
sence of such inflammable materials on the Russian frontier is 
even far more dangerous to peace, than the predatory charac¬ 
teristics of the Afghan tribes Russian diplomats make so 
much fuss about. 

Aliklianoff fell into disgrace about the time General Loma¬ 
kin returned to the Caspian from an unsuccessful attack upon 


6 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


the Tekke strongholds in Akhal. He at once elected to be 
sent to Tchikishlar to join the expedition General Lazareff 
was preparing to lead against the tribesmen. There he met 
O’Donovan, and one of the last letters that lamented corre¬ 
spondent wrote to me before proceeding to the Soudan con¬ 
tained a request that I should give his hearty wishes to 
AlikhanofF, if I met him during my journey in the Caspian. 
He said AlikhanofF was a “ capital fellow, a brave and capable 
soldier, and was much liked in the camp.” 

During this campaign AlikhanofF attained the highest rank 
as a non-commissioned officer. When SkobelefF arrived the 
following year to retrieve the broken fortunes of the 
LazarefF-Lomakin expedition, he was accorded every oppor¬ 
tunity of distinguishing himself. However, attached to the 
force were so many heroes, as dashing as himself, that his 
exploits were lost among the crowd of their achievements. 

The history of SkobelefF’s siege of Geok Tepe yet remains 
to be written. O’Donovan saw nothing of it, except the 
final rout through a telescope from a hill on the Perso- 
Turcoman frontier. Hence he left it undescribed in his book 
on Merv. Hone the less, it was a campaign full of exciting 
incident, and a clear account of it would be very popular in 
this country. 

Retreating from their line of settlements, stretching along 
the Akhal oasis from Kizil Arvat to Geok Tepe, the Tekkes 
collected to the number of 40,000 families at the latter 
place, and forming a camp, with tents pitched closely one 
against the other, built round it a huge clay wall, remind¬ 
ing the Russians of an immense railway embankment. The 
defence was mainly controlled by two chiefs, Makdum Kuli 
Khan and Tekme Sardar. The latter had submitted to 
Russia the year before, but being badly treated by Lomakin, 
had fled the camp and joined his countrymen afresh. Them 
he instructed in the art of building rapidly large earthworks, 


HOW ALIKHANOFF FIRST WENT TO MERV. 7 


after the manner he had observed practised by the Russians 
during their advance. 

The expedition the previous year had been despatched up 
the Atrek river, from its mouth at Tchikishlar. Skobeleff 
changed the base to Krasnovodsk, or more properly to Port 
Michaelovsk, a small harbour on the south-east side of 
Krasnovodsk Bay, and considerably nearer Akhal. It is 
from this point that the railway now runs in the direction 
of India. 

At that time the Turcoman barrier was considered so diffi¬ 
cult to break down, that Russia was ready to resort to extra¬ 
ordinary efforts to hasten the submission of the tribes. 
During the debates on Candahar, Lord Salisbury said he had 
always believed that the Turcoman barrier would last his 
lifetime. Even in Russia, so severe was the resistance appre¬ 
hended, that General Tergoukasoff, Skobeleffs predecessor, 
did not think that the barrier could be broken with less 
than three years’ hard fighting. To quicken matters, Russia 
therefore selected Skobeleff for the task, and very wisely 
gave him carte blanche as to the resources he was to employ 
to accomplish it. 

Stowed away in the magazines at Bender, on the south¬ 
west frontier, were one hundred miles of railway, which 
Russia had purchased to use in the Balkan peninsula in the 
event of a failure of the Berlin Congress. At Skobeleffs 
request, the line was shifted to the Caspian, and laid down 
in the direction of Geok Tepe. In this casual manner 
originated the Russian railway to India, which has effected 
so many changes in Central Asia, and promises to completely 
revolutionise the relations of England and Russia with the 
region. 

The railway, however, proved of very little service in the 
actual campaign, and we may, therefore, reserve an account 
of it for a future chapter. While it was being built Skobeleff 



8 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


pushed on a force to Banff, the first stronghold of any size in 
the Akhal oasis, and there gradually accumulated the munitions 
of war and food supplies essential for the seige. When 
everything was ready he advanced to Geok Tepe, and, seizing 
a fortified point close to the walls, commenced the attack 
upon the fortress. 

The Tekke stronghold was fully as difficult to take as the 
Russians had expected. Their artillery made no impression 
upon the huge clay rampart; they had, therefore, to resort to 
every form of siege operations to reduce the fortress. The con¬ 
flict lasted nearly a month, during which the Russians suffered 
heavy losses, and experienced severe privations. Step by step, 
however, Skobeleff pushed his way until he got close enough 
to sink a mine, which was carried to the foot of the rampart. 
At the same time, his 69 guns fired daily from 100 to 500 
shots into the place, and the expenditure of ammunition by 
the infantry ranged from 10,000 to 70,000 rounds. 

The brunt of the attack fell upon General Kouropatkin, 
commanding the Turkestan contingent. As this officer is 
spoken of as likely to command the Russian army, in the event 
of a conflict at the gates of Herat, it may be well to take 
advantage of the opportunity to say a few words about him. 

Among rising Russian generals, there is probably no one 
more admired by the army than Kouropatkin. He was 
Skobeleff’s right hand man in most of his campaigns. He 
served with him in the Khivan expedition, and in the Kho- 
kandese campaign. He acted as chief of his staff at Plevna, 
and during the march upon Constantinople, and he exercised 
immediate control, under Skobeleff, of the forces before Geok 
Tepe. 

When Skobeleff was appointed to the command of the army 
against the Turcomans, one of his first acts was to telegraph 
to Kouropatkin, then on the Kuldja frontier, to join him with 
a contingent of Turkestan troops. His march across Central 


General Kouropatkin. 



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HOW ALIKHANOFF FIRST WENT TO MERV. 11 


Asia excited universal admiration at the time. After being 
weeks on the road, proceeding from Tashkent to Khiva, Kou- 
ropatkin had to accomplish a difficult march across the 
desert, by a route almost unknown, to the concentrating 
point of Bami. General Annenkoff was at Bami at the time, 
and went out to meet him. “ Kouropatkin,” said he to me, 
in dilating enthusiastically on this achievement—“Kouropat¬ 
kin had been 26 days marching over a sandy and waterless 
desert; yet his force marched in clean and trim, and as fresh 
as a daisy.” 

When, at the invitation of Skobeleff’s friends, I accom¬ 
panied the funeral party, conveying the body of that great 
hero from Moscow to its last resting-place at Spasskoe Selo, 
in South Russia, in 1882, I was thrown for several days 
among Skobeleff’s favourite officers; and more than once I 
heard a controversy among them as to whether Kouropatkin 
was not almost as good a leader as their lost general. “ Kou¬ 
ropatkin,” said a Turkestan officer to me, during one of these 
discussions, “ possesses all the characteristics of SkobelefF, cast 
in a cooler mould. They worked admirably together, Kou¬ 
ropatkin imparting coolness and calculation to SkobelefF, and 
SkobelefF fire and enthusiasm to Kouropatkin. I am quite 
desolate now that SkobelefF is gone”—here his eyes filled 
with tears—“ but it is a consolation to all of us tha,t we have 
still got Kouropatkin. He is now the SkobelefF of Russia.” 

During the first few days succeeding Skobeleff’s death, a 
strong and angry feeling prevailed in Russia against the 
Government. It was felt that the deceased hero’s merits 
had never been properly appreciated by the State, and I en¬ 
countered various officers at Moscow who were persuaded he 
had been poisoned. To appease the army, the Emperor felt 
he could not do better than summon Kouropatkin from Cen¬ 
tral Asia and give him a high appointment at home. Since 
then he has been treated as a favourite at Court, and if he 


I 


12 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 

i 

lias secured no notoriety abroad, it is simply because lie has 
always devoted himself to his profession, and left politics 
alone. Skobeleff had in him all the elements of a great 
statesman, as well as those of a great general. His political 
influence was becoming positively embarrassing to the Tsar’s 
ministers when he died. Kouropatkin has never sought to 
form a party in Russia—he is quite content to be a great 
general, and nothing more. 

During the siege of Geok Tepe he had charge of the ad¬ 
vanced positions, and displayed extraordinary coolness and 
courage. Unobtrusive almost to a fault, he carefully super¬ 
vised the mechanical part of the siege operations, while 
Skobeleff applied himself to keeping the troops in that 
rollicking, reckless mood he considered so essential in the 
presence of the enemy. Seated at the mouth of the mine, 
Skobeleff used to time the progress of the sappers under¬ 
ground, tunnelling in the direction of the fortress. If the 
officer in charge accomplished the specified portion in less 
than the time fixed, he was kissed and caressed, and perhaps 
treated to champagne or vodky; if the reverse was the case, 
he was roundly abused before all the soldiers. 

Throughout the greater part of the siege Alikhanoff, who 
was now a cornet of the Pereslaff Dragoons, was employed in 
foraging operations, or reconnoitring that portion of the 
fortress, facing the desert, which was uninvested by the 
Russians. 

At length the day of the assault arrived. More than a ton 
of gunpowder was laid at the head of the mine, immediately 
under the rampart, and, on being fired, laid bare a broad en¬ 
trance into the enemy’s defences. Through this and another 
breach made by the artillery the Russians rushed into the 
place, and perpetrated all the horrors usual when orders are 
given to infuriated and semi-barbarous troops to give no 
quarter to either sex. 


HOW ALIKE ANOFF FIRST WENT TO MERV. 13 


Even when the Turcomans, no longer offering resistance, 
streamed out in a disorderly mob across the desert in the 
direction of Merv, men, women, and children mingled to¬ 
gether, no mercy was shown to them. Artillery followed in 
their rear, and mowed them down, until darkness put an end 
to the pursuit. During that short few hours’ chase the 1,000 
pursuing Russians slaughtered 8,000 of the fugitives. Hun¬ 
dreds of women were sabred. 6,500 bodies were also after¬ 
wards found inside the fortress. At Kertch the year before 
last I met an Armenian Jew, Samuel Gourovitcb, who had 
accompanied as interpreter a secret Russian mission to Cabul 
in 1882, and was present at the sack of Geok Tepe. He told 
me that the carnage was fearful. 

“ One thousand Russians cut down 8,000 Turcomans in a 
few hours. The whole country was covered with corpses. 
The morning after the battle they lay in rows, like freshly- 
mown hay, as they had been swept down by the mitrailleurs 
and artillery. I myself saw babies bayoneted or slashed to 
pieces. Many women were ravished before being killed.” 

“But Skobeleff told me that not a woman had been dis¬ 
honoured.” 

“Lots were,” he replied, energetically. “They were 
ravished by the soldiers before my eyes. Skobeleff may not 
have known it. I could tell you many horrible things that 
took place ; but (tapping his lips significantly) it is better to 
be silent in this world. The plunder at Geok Tepe was 
immense. The troops were allowed to get drink, plunder, 
and kill for three days after the assault.” 

During the actual assault, and in the subsequent pursuit 
the infantry engaged fired 273,804 rounds, the cavalry 12,510, 
and the artillery 5,864 rounds; 224 military rockets were 
also expended. The total loss of the Turcomans during the 
siege was estimated by Skobeleff at 20,000. In other words, 
half the defenders perished. 


14 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT, 


The two leaders, Tekme Sardar and Makdum Kuli, escaped, 
and fled to Merv. Pushing on in their rear, Skoheleff occupied 
Askabad, the capital of the Akhal Tekkes, twenty-seven miles 
east of Geok Tepe, and despatched Kouropatkin thence almost 
half way to the Merv oasis. It was these reconnoitrings of 
Kouropatkin that occasioned so much excitment at the time. 
The belief was general that SkobelefF would occupy Merv. 

It is almost unnecessary to state that he did not march to 
Merv; but it is well to disperse any doubts that may exist as 
to the reason he did not push on any further. It is generally 
supposed that a disinclination to displease England, and a 
desire to keep his promises, caused the Emperor to restrain 
the ardour of Skoheleff. This is a mistake. By the terrific 
blow he struck the Akhal Tekkes at Geok Tepe, Skobeleff 
shattered to pieces the Turcoman barrier Lord Salisbury had 
fondly believed would last his lifetime; but he was too 
mauled to reap the full advantage of it for the moment. He 
only had a striking force of 2,000 sickly men after he occupied 
Askabad, and having used up nearly all his ammunition during 
the siege, he was not in a condition to push on to an un¬ 
known oasis, and expose himself to a repetition of the hard 
knocks he had received at Geok Tepe. 

So he returned home; but before he left Akhal an incident 
occurred which shows what a deep personal interest he took 
in the Central Asian Question. In spite of Russia’s avowed 
intention of keeping the country she had won, and notwith¬ 
standing that the Turcoman barrier had been shattered, the 
English Government decided to evacuate Afghanistan. The 
ablest English writers on the Russo-Indian Question were 
averse to surrendering Candahar, but the Government persisted 
in its policy, and it received the warmest concurrence of the 
Marquis of Ripon. 

Speaking at Leeds, on January 28, 1885, the Ex-Viceroy 
said: “We withdrew at a time which suited our purpose, 


HOW ALIKHANOFF FIRST WENT TO MERV. 15 


and which we believed to be to the advantage of the Afghan 
people; and as our troops marched away with steady steps 
from Candahar, no voice was lifted against us, and no dog 
barked at our heels.” 

Yet, as a matter of fact, a voice was lifted against us, and 
poisoned the motives of our departure. That voice was 
Skobeleff’s. In an official account of Skobeleff’s campaign, 
which General Grodekoff, the chief of his staff at Geok Tepe, 
has just published, the following passage occurs:—“ To raise 
Russia’s pi'estige in Central Asia, and to depress that of 
England, General Skobeleff sent native agents into the bazaars 
of Central Asia, to spread throughout the region the report 
that it was the White Tsar who had compelled England to 
evacuate Afghanistan.” 

Such a revelation cannot be very pleasing to those who 
held at the time that we were conciliating Russia by evacu¬ 
ating Candahar. As a matter of fact, our retirement encour¬ 
aged the Russians to advance. They thought we had had 
enough of Afghanistan, and would never enter the country 
any more. In an official Russian account of the war which I 
have in my possession, and which is to be found in every mili¬ 
tary library in Russia, the writer, General Soboleff, asserts 
that we retired because we were so repeatedly defeated by the 
Afghans, that the people of India were excited to a mutinous 
condition by our disasters. If our army had not fallen back 
in time, the whole of India would have risen against us ! 

It is the publication of such works as Soboleff’s “ Anglo- 
Afghan Conflict,” and Skobeleff’s plans for invading India, 
that has stimulated so strongly the desire of Russian military 
men to shatter our Eastern Empire. 

Just before the evacuation of Candahar took place, a clever 
caricature was published in Russia, entitled “ England and 
Russia in Central Asia.” This represented two feet: one, 
English shod, stepping off a piece of ground marked “ Afghan- 


I 


1G THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 

istan,” and another, encased in a big Russian boot, advancing 
closely upon it, with the evident intention of administering 
a kick to the retiring party. I had several thousand copies 
of this caricature struck off, and distributed them to Parlia.. 
ment and the Press during the Candahar debate; but I did not 
imagine at the time—nor yet, I suppose, did anybody—that 
the Russian artist had so correctly represented in a sketch 
meant to be humorous, what SkobelefF had actually done. 

The brilliant and dashing general, having administered a 
parting kick at us, returned home, and Russia proceeded to 
organize her new possession. In the meanwhile O’Donovan 
made his famous dash to Merv, and during his five months’ 
stay wrote those wonderful letters which will never perish 
so long as any record exists of British travel. 

But Edmund O’Donovan did more than simply pen letters 
to the Dailij News. He endeavoured to persuade the Turco¬ 
mans to cease their attacks upon the Russians, and avoid 
giving them any offence. These efforts were, to a large ex¬ 
tent, successful, and from the time he left the oasis until the 
Russians occupied it, the only outrage the Merv Tekkes 
perpetrated was the attack on the Parfenoff surveying party 
in 1882. This outrage, however, was due to some bad 
characters, and was so quickly and promptly disavowed by 
the tribe, that the Russians expressed themselves perfectly 
satisfied with the reparation made by the Mervis. 

After O’Donovan had left the oasis, the Russian authorities 
decided they would thoroughly establish their influence there. 
Tekme Sardar, one of the two Tekke chiefs defending Geok 
Tepe, had already surrendered to them, and had been sent to 
St. Petersburg to be tamed by a sight of Russia. The second, 
Makdum Kuli, O’Donovan’s friend, they tried to win over 
through their secret agents, but failed. 

One of these secret agents was Fazil Beg, a Russianized 
Khivan. He used to go backwards and forwards between 


IIOW ALIKHANOFF FIRST WENT TO MERV. 17 


Merv and Askabad, and encouraged all the Tekkes he could 
to visit the latter place to traffic at the bazaar the Russians 
had erected. 

The Russians are well aware of the value of a bazaar as a 
means of exercising influence in the East. Directly they 
finished their fort at Askabad, they erected a bazaar there, 
and encouraged Armenians from Baku and Tiflis to establish 
shops in the place. Before long the Tekkes of Merv, attracted 
by the high prices the Russians gave for their supplies, began 
to appear at Askabad; at first, singly, and somewhat shy; 
afterwards in bands, when they found they were well treated. 

In course of time the richer and more influential of the 
Mervis followed suit. As all arrivals at the bazaar were 
notified to the Russian authorities at once, they extended a 
warm hand to every Tekke who possessed any influence 
whatever at home, and in this manner created a pro-Russian 
party at Merv. 

Herat is about as close to Merv as Merv is to Askabad. 
It is well to bear in mind that the moment the Russians 
occupied Merv they established a bazaar there, with thirty- 
two Armenian traders from Baku, and commenced applying 
to the tribesmen of the Murghab those tactics so successful 
at the capital of the Akhal Tekkes. But for the opportune 
arrival of Sir Peter Lumsden last autumn, there might have 
already been a pro-Russian party at Herat. 

As soon as events had sufficiently matured, the authorities 
at Askabad decided to send an officer to Merv to obtain 
secretly a military survey of the oasis. AlikhanofT was the 
person chosen. To facilitate his operations a caravan was 
fitted out, commanded by an Armenian trader named Kosikh, 
representing in Central Asia the Moscow firm of Konshin 
and Co. Kosikh was already known at Merv to many 
Tekkes, who had transacted business with him in the Aska¬ 
bad bazaar. 


2 


18 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


Alikhanoff played the part of clerk to Kosikh the trader, 
and also acted as interpreter. It was a great advantage to 
him in his expedition that he spoke the language of the 
Turcomans quite fluently. To assist him in his survey a 
cornet of the Cossacks, SokolofF, was appointed, and was 
also disguised as a caravan clerk. 

To prevent any possibility of a failure of the enterprise, 
the Russians decided that they would not ask the permission 
of the Merv Tekkes to visit them, but would pounce upon 
them unawares. Alikhanoff, England knows to her cost, is 
an expert in effecting surprises, and his audacity was never 
better displayed than in his caravan journey to Merv. 

Quitting Askabad early in February, 1882, the caravan, 
consisting of a few camels escorted by half a dozen well- 
armed Turcoman horsemen, set out for Merv via Kahka and 
the Tejend oasis. The distance by this route is 232 miles, 
and is divided into six marches. The distance from Merv 
to Herat is 240 miles. 

Fazil Beg, the spy, went on to Merv beforehand to secure 
some guides for the expedition, and arrange with the pro- 
Russian party for the protection of the traders on their 
arrival. During the journey Alikhanoff made a thorough 
survey of the country, exploring parts unvisited by Mr. 
O’Donovan, and, entering Merv at night, encamped in the 
midst of the Tekkes, without anybody being aware of it 
except the chiefs in Russian pay. 

The next morning, of course, there was a great hubbub at 
Merv. The people were not quite so staggered as when Mr. 
O’Donovan put in his sudden appearance among them, for 
many had become acquainted with the Russians in the in¬ 
terval ; but they were more angry, and had not Alikhanoff 
possessed influential supporters among the chiefs, things 
would have fared badly with the caravan. At the very least, 
they would have been expelled at once from the oasis. 


HOW ALIKHANOFF FIRST WENT TO MERV. 19 


As usual, a meeting of the khans and elders was convened 
the moment the presence of the Russians became known, and 
the latter were summoned to appear before it. The meeting 
took place in a large kibitka or tent, to reach which the Rus¬ 
sians had to pass through an “immense ” crowd of sightseers. 
“Entering the Idbitka” says Alikhanoff,* “ Kosikh, extend¬ 
ing to every one his hands, which were shaken very unwil¬ 
lingly, sat down, as befits a rich Russian merchant, side by 
side with Makdum Kuli. I, as interpreter, sat on a felt at 
the entrance. The silence continued. Waiting some time 
for someone to speak, I decided to break it myself. I there¬ 
fore commenced with something like the following 
harangue:— 

“ * Erom the letters you have received, you doubtless know 
the aim of our journey. My master, Severin Beg, is a rich 
Russian merchant. He enjoys the greatest respect of our 
authorities, and hence they instructed him to give their 
salaam to the people of Merv. Deciding to establish com¬ 
mercial intercourse with you, Severin Beg has come here to 
find out, on the spot, whether he can buy and sell in your 
market. The Russian Government fully sympathises with 
this action, since it anticipates from it mutual advantages so 
desirable for the friendly and peaceful relations of neighbours. 
Thus, the sole object of our journey here is trade, and we 
should like to know what your views are upon the point, and 
how you mean to regard it.’ 

“Another prolonged silence, broken at last by an old man, 
who said,— 

“ ‘ Commerce is a good thing, but we fear to draw upon us 
the responsibility which will arise if any attack is made upon 
you by those bad men who exist among us, as everywhere. 
Go back to Askabad to negotiate with our delegates. Eix 


* See narrative in “ The Russians at Merv and Herat.” 

2—2 



20 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


our relations, and when both peoples are united, trade as much 
as you like,’ &c., of an equally evasive character. 

“‘I tell you we are traders,’I rejoined; ‘it is notour 
affair to join or disunite peoples. For that, apply to the 
Russian government; send it your envoys if you like. As re¬ 
gards us, there is nothing undetermined in our relations. The 
Russians are at peace with you. The Askabad bazaar is filled 
with traders from Merv. We did not see, therefore, any 
reason why we should not come here, and hence resolved to 
come. Give us a decided answer. Will you let us unpack 
and commence trade, or do you demand our return? But 
mind, I warn you beforehand that your action will he viewed 
in its proper light by General Rohrberg, if you close to Rus¬ 
sians alone that route which is freely made use of by the rest 
of our neighbours, Bokharans, Khivans, Persians, and Afghans. 
Just think what your relations will be with a powerful neigh¬ 
bour, if the authorities at Askabad reply to your conduct by 
refusing to allow a single Mervi to put his foot on Russian 
soil ? Who will be the loser then ? ’ 

“ Again a profound silence, broken at last by a discussion of 
the chiefs as to whether delegates should be sent to Askabad 
or not. 

“ ‘ We don’t value the trade of Merv so much as all that, 

I said at last, ‘ we are not disposed to waste our time running 
backwards and forwards. If we go back this time without 
selling our goods, you won’t see our faces any more. I should 
like to ask you to tell me whether you assemble and debate 
every time a caravan arrives, or only do this to the Russians ? ’ 

“ ‘No, we would not assemble thus,’ replied an elder. ‘If 
anybody were to fall upon the caravan of any other country, 
if they were to rob it before my eyes, I would not even 
wink. We are not afraid of them; but we don’t want 
anything to happen to you, the merchants of the great 
Padishah.’ 


IIOW A LIKE A N OFF FIRST WENT TO MERV. 21 


“‘The people are ready to obey us,’ added Kara Kuli Khan; 
‘ we have no doubts on that score. But there are not a few 
Jcaltamans in the oasis—robbers from whom we ourselves are 
not safe. They might fall on your packs, and on you your¬ 
selves.’ 

“ ‘ If we do not meet with any hostility on the part of the 
people,’ I replied, ‘we will answer for the rest. Our arms 
and our escort will keep the robbers in order.’ 

“ ‘ Again a profound silence. Makdum Kuli exchanged 
significant glances with his neighbours.’ 

“ ‘ I have said all I have to say,’ I continued; ‘ we will 
now await your answer. If it be the same as before, we 
shall prepare for the journey back to Askabad.’ 

“ I felt sure that the previous answer would not be repeated. 

“ After another discussion Makdum Kuli said :—‘ Tell the 
trader, that we are only influenced by fears for his safety, 
otherwise, we have nothing against him, and he may stop 
here for ever if he likes.’ 

“ ‘ God forbid ! ’ I replied. ‘ It will be quite enough to 
stop here two or three market days to see what your trade is.’ 

“ ‘ In that case, here is our answer,’ said Makdum Kuli. 

‘ Let him remain here two or three market days, and after¬ 
wards return to Askabad with the delegates.’” 

This was agreed upon, and the assembly broke up. Ali- 
khanoff’s account of the discussion throws a clear light upon 
his adroitness in managing Asiatics. He thoroughly under¬ 
stands their ways. 

The Russians stayed a fortnight at Merv, during which 
Alikhanoff made as many friends as he could, and intrigued 
against those who were disposed to interfere with the accom¬ 
plishment of his great aim. Disguised afresh as a Tekke, he 
availed himself of every opportunity to explore the oasis, and 
by stealing out at early dawn secured unobserved a survey of 
the fortress of Merv. 


22 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


He himself was quite at home among the Tekkes, but 
Kosikh grew nervous after hearing that some of the people 
had been plotting against his life, and hastened the depar¬ 
ture of the caravan. Alikhanoff took advantage of the return 
journey to survey another route between Askabad and Merv. 

Shortly afterwards, a second Russian officer, a Mussulman 
named Nasirbegoff, who had accompanied Stolietoff to Cabul 
as topographer, was sent to Merv in disguise, and pushed on 
thence to the Oxus. By this time the Tekkes had lost so 
much of their hostility to the Russians, that it was felt that 
an agent might be sent there openly. Lessar was selected • 
for this mission, and passed through Merv to Khiva without 
exciting any animosity. In this manner Russia secured with¬ 
in a twelvemonth a survey of all the roads converging from 
the Turkestan and Transcaspian bases upon Merv, and dis¬ 
pelled the disinclination of the people to receive Russian 
visitors. 

Another success followed upon this. Alikhanoff, who had 
maintained close relations with Makdum Kuli, persuaded 
that chief to throw in his lot with Russia, and proceed to 
Moscow to witness the Tsar’s coronation. His submission 
was considered a great gain for Russia. He had been the soul 
of the defence of Geok Tepe, and the* authorities at Askabad 
had always feared that he might repeat that terrible resistance 
at Merv. His departure from the oasis left the people with¬ 
out a leader, and henceforward the Russians felt that they 
could afford to play a bolder game. 

I saw Makdum Kuli several times at the Tsar’s coronation. 
He lodged with other Asiatics at an hotel opposite the rooms 
assigned me by the Russian Government. The splendour 
of the Kremlin festivities thoroughly tamed him, and when 
he returned with the rest of the Turcomans to Askabad he 
was as little disposed to fight Russia any more as Cetewayo 
after his trip to London. 


HOW ALIKHANOFF FIRST WENT TO MERV. 23 

Knowing how great his personal influence at Merv had 
been, Alikhanoff induced him to pay a visit there on his 
arrival, to describe to his fellow countrymen what the glories 
of Russia were like. His descriptions of the sights he had 
seen at Moscow exercised a most depressing effect upon the 
anti-Russian party, while at the same time the handsome 
Russian uniform he wore, and the account he gave of the 
favours conferred upon him by the Emperor, provoked a 
desire among other chiefs to make the acquaintance of such 
generous masters. 


CHAPTER II. 


THE SWOOP UPON MEUV. 

Russia, angry at our continued occupation of Egypt, resolves to seize the 
gates of Herat—Secret concentration of troops at points commanding 
Merv—Colonel Muratoff goes to the Tejend oasis “to return,” but 
remains—Sudden appearance of Lieutenant Alikhanoff at Merv—The 
intrigues resulting in the acceptance of the suzerainty of Russia— 
Russia promises to place only one officer in the oasis—Sudden advance 
of the Tejend force behind the Askabad deputation of chiefs—The 
Merv Tekkes hurriedly resist, but are defeated, and the Russians enter 
the fortress—Alikhanoff made governor of Merv. 

J UST then the Egyptian question was exciting a good deal 
of attention. Our active interference in Soudan affairs 
had not yet begun, and during the lull preceding it, a general 
European discussion was prevailing as to whether England 
should or should not evacuate Egypt. Russia had never con¬ 
cealed her opposition to our being there at all, and she there¬ 
fore threw herself vigorously into the controversy. 

To understand her feelings properly, we must endeavour to 
examine things a little from her standpoint. Russia makes 
no secret that she is determined some day to have Constanti¬ 
nople. Her longing for the Bosphorus is as great now as it 
ever was in her career. The most resolute opponent to her 
aims is England. Austria and Germany she believes may be 
“squared”; but up to now it has been impossible to buy off 
England. Still, Russia has always nourished a hope that 
when matters reached a decisive stage, our acquiesence might 
be purchased by allowing, or assisting us to annex Egypt. 
Cairo was the price to be paid for Constantinople. 

I have no space to go fully into the details of this 
policy; but I have said enough to indicate that Russian 


THE SWOOP UPON MERV. 


25 


statesmen could not be pleased at our occupying Egypt and 
offering them no compensation. We appropriated the power 
of Egypt; we assumed control over the Suez Canal; and still 
we as fiercely as ever refused to allow Russia to advance upon 
Constantinople. 

I shall be told that Russia had no right to be angry at our 
occupation of Egypt, since we had no intention of annexing 
the country. In reply, I must ask that matters be again 
looked at from the Russian standpoint. Russian policy is 
dictated by the impressions and the feelings of Russian states¬ 
men, not by the impressions of Englishmen. The general 
impression in Russia at the time was, that England had vir¬ 
tually annexed Egypt, and that the fluctuations and contor¬ 
tions of Mr. Gladstone’s policy masked a cut and dried plan 
for permanently retaining the country. 

Anybody who has lived in the military states of Europe 
can easily understand how such an impression should have 
arisen. The statesman of Russia, Germany, Austria, and 
France usually formulate a policy long in advance of current 
events, and resolutely apply themselves to deliberately work¬ 
ing it out. English statesmen, on the other hand, mostly 
live from hand to mouth. The occupation of Egypt was the 
result of no deep “ design,” using the term in the Continental 
sense. England floundered into the Egyptian embroglio, and 
yet the errors of her statesmen did more to root her influence 
and authority in the country than the cleverest scheming 
could have done. Now, men who make events are apt to 
think that others make them also. Russia, at first disposed 
to treat Mr. Gladstone’s disinterested policy as generously as 
that statesman’s Liberal supporters, observed after a while 
that England benefited, in her view, so largely by his blunders, 
that she began to ascribe them to a deep and clever plan. 

When England first sent troops to Egypt there were three 
great obstacles to a prolonged or permanent occupation of the 


26 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


country. In the first place, the English public generally were 
averse to it; in the second, the Egyptian people, it was 
thought, would never tolerate a foreign ruler; in the third, 
most politicians held that all the Great Powers would oppose 
a long stay. 

The first two obstacles had practically disappeared by 
the autumn of 1883. After the collapse of Arabi Pasha’s 
army, the whole of Egypt proper submitted without a struggle 
to English authority. Excluding the Soudan, the country 
proved amazingly easy to rule. The people, in short, ap¬ 
peared to be so utterly unable to do without their new 
masters, that England began to look upon herself as marked 
out by Providence to control the country. 

Of course she only meant to control it for a time, but to 
Russia, who had opposed any occupation at all, it was as ob¬ 
noxious that she should remain in Egypt three, five, or fifteen 
years, as for ever. What England considered a troublesome 
burden, Russia regarded as a splendid acquisition—a grand 
dependency possessing all the elements of a second India. 
Our continued occupation, therefore, displeased her. Finding 
we were indisposed to evacuate the country at once, she de¬ 
cided she would establish a counterpoise in the East. She 
resolved to reopen the Central Asia Question. 

The Emperor was perfectly aware that Merv was no coun¬ 
terbalance to Cairo, or Sarakhs to Alexandria; but what he 
had in view was the creation of a new base, that would en¬ 
able him to reopen in turn the Eastern Question on advan¬ 
tageous terms. Merv, if a “mere collection of mud huts,” as 
the Duke of Argyll expressed it, was the stepping stone to 
Herat, and at Herat he would be able to put the screw on 
England, if her policy in Egypt continued to displease him. 

I have been at pains to describe the influence the Egyptian 
Question had on the occupation of Merv, because, if it be 
clearly appreciated, the subsequent movement to the gates of 


THE SWOOP UPON MERV. 


27 


Herat will be found to contain a larger amount of menace than 
is commonly imagined. The swoop upon Merv was no hap¬ 
hazard event. No local reason whatever provoked it. Russia 
was not forced to occupy Merv by any circumstance on the 
spot compelling her, against her wish, to violate her numerous 
assurances to this country. I believe that I am acquainted 
with everything that has been published in Russia—official 
and non-official—bearing upon the occupation of Merv. This 
published literature does not contain a single charge against 
the people of Merv, in excuse for the annexation. 

Therefore, all that has been written in England by writers 
ignorant of the course of events in Russia, extenuating the 
annexation on the grounds of the difficulty of keeping the 
Merv Tekkes in order except by annexation, is theoretical 
nonsense. The Merv Tekkes were in excellent order at the 
time, so far as Russia was concerned. They had committed 
no outrages on Russia, and were committing none. It was as 
safe for Russian caravans to journey from Askabad to Khiva, 
across a desert which, anterior to the previous campaign, had 
been a prey to disorder, as to journey from Tashkent to 
Samarcand, or Tiflis to Baku. The Merv Tekkes scrupulously 
avoided attacking Russian subjects, and it was a matter of 
common notoriety that these man-stealers of the Asiatic 
steppes, finding their occupation as such gone, were becoming 
quiet, hard-working, industrious peasants. 

It is true that there were small forays now and again against 
the Persians of the Atak oasis, a district stretching from the 
Russian frontier to Sarakhs; but they were a mere bagatelle 
compared with the great plundering expeditions the Tekkes 
twenty years previous had led in different directions, and 
for these forays Russia herself was indirectly responsible. 

The Atak oasis was an integral part of Persia. The Shah’s 
right to it was never questioned until Russia occupied Aska¬ 
bad. The Alieli and other Turcomans paid tribute regularly 


28 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


to the Shah’s representatives, and appealed to them for help 
when they quarrelled with the Tekkes of Merv. If that 
help was not always forthcoming, it did not demonstrate that 
the Atak was not part of Persia, for the people of the oasis 
were as much given to forays as the Tekkes, and, as often as 
not, were themselves the offenders. 

To put an end to this condition of things, Persia pre¬ 
pared, after the occupation of Askabad, to exercise more 
stringent authority over the people of the Atak. The Shah 
felt that, if he only kept them in order, and prevented them 
perpetrating small raids upon Merv, the people of Merv in 
turn, having no provocation for their forays, would suspend 
their outrages. The Persian authorities admitted that their 
Atak subjects provoked the raids, and one has only to refer 
to O’Donovan’s book to see how exasperating they could be 
towards their Merv neighbours across the desert. 

But I wish it to be clearly tuiderstood that, after all, 
these raids were very rare subsequent to the occupation of 
Askabad—say half-a-dozen times in the course of a year, 
and that only a few individuals participated in them. The 
Persian border from Askabad to Sarakhs was incomparably 
quieter than it had been in O’Donovan’s time, and had the 
Shah’s troops occupied two or three points in the oasis, the 
last vestiges of border turbulence would have disappeared. 
Russia allowed the troops to almost reach the district, and 
then delivered a sort of ultimatum, forbidding them to 
enter it. 

The English Government protested strongly against this. 
It demonstrated clearly enough the Shah’s claim to the 
territory. It showed how great would be the benefit to the 
people of the Atak and Merv if the frontier were properly 
administered. Russia refused to listen to any arguments. 
She would not occupy the district herself, and she would not 
allow Persia to do it. She kept open this tiny sore on the 


TIIE SWOOP UPON MERV. 


29 


Persian frontier, in order that if ever she wanted a pretext 
for occupying Merv one would he immediately forthcoming. # 

Of course this was not the sole reason; there was another 
and greater one. The easy road from Askabad to Herat, 
via Old Sarakhs, runs through this Atak oasis. Had Russia 
let Persia assume definite control over it, the advance upon 
India would have been blocked. Russia could have only 
advanced with the permission of the Shah, or by violating his 
territory. This circumstance gave an importance to the 
Atak oasis out of all proportion to its intrinsic worth. It 
was, from the Russian standpoint, absolutely essential to. 
Russia. 

Prom what I have said, which, in common with the 
greater part of this book, is based on Russian information, it 
will be seen that there was no serious tribal turbulence on the 
Russo-Turcoman frontier at the time the swoop was made upon 
Merv; and that, as regards the Persian border, the old raids 
had dwindled down to petty pilferings, which could have 
been suppressed at any moment if the Emperor had allowed 
the Shah to keep his subjects under better control. 

So insignificant were these pilferings, that Russia has never 
attempted to cite them as an excuse for the occupation of 
Merv. It is only a few English writers who have put forward 
the plea, and they have done so because they were ignorant 
of the true state of affairs on the Russo-Turcoman frontier in 
the autumn of 1883. 

To me it has always appeared ridiculous, as well as unpa¬ 
triotic, for Englishmen to invent pleas for Russia’s aggressive¬ 
ness, based on mere theory, which Russia herself does not take 
the trouble, or is unable to put forward, in extenuation of her 
advances towards India. Tribal turbulence provoked the 
conquest of Geok Tepe, and Russia’s contention on this score 

* The negotiations on the question of the Atak oasis will be found in 
Blue Book, Central Asia, No. 1, 1884. 




30 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


I have always defended. But tribal turbulence did not pro¬ 
voke the occupation of Merv, and those who fancy it did 
should just remember that Russia herself has never sought 
justification on this ground. 

Nor is the plea that Alikhanoff and Komaroff acted on their 
own responsibility any sounder. Russia herself has never 
advanced this excuse. It is only English writers who have 
done so, and done so without the slightest basis for their 
erroneous assertion. This I can prove at a stroke. 

In the spring of 1883 the garrison of Khiva, located at 
Fort Petro-Alexandravsk, consisted of the 4th Regiment of 
Orenburg Cossacks, the 5th and 13th Turkestan line battalions, 
and the 6th battery of artillery. This was the strength of the 
garrison according to the official report published in Russia 
early in the year, and it tallied, I have good grounds for be¬ 
lieving, with the list in the possession of the military autho¬ 
rities at Simla, derived from non-Russian sources. In the 
autumn of 1883 the garrison was increased by the arrival of 
the 17th Turkestan line battalion from Samarcand. 

I only knew of this last year, after the occupation of Merv 
was an accomplished fact. Every day I receive from Russia 
the principal newspapers, including those of the Caucasus 
and Turkestan; and one morning, glancing through the 
Moscow Gazette , I saw that among the sufferers from a flood 
near Fort Petra-Alexandravsk were the men of the 17th Line 
Battalion. Now this battalion belonged to the garrison of 
Samarcand, distant at least a month from Khiva, by the 
quickest possible means of conveyance—how, therefore, had 
it come to be shifted to the latter place, and for what 
reason ? 

This was explained in an equally casual manner a short 
time afterwards. Writing from Fort Petro-Alexandrovsk to 
the same paper, a correspondent, signing himself Gospodin 
Tchursin, mentioned, among other things, the suicide of 


THE SWOOP UPON MERV. 


31 


Lieutenant Bodisco, of this same 17th battalion, “who had 
been in a state of deep melancholy from the time six months 
previous, when the battalion had been sent from Samarcand 
to Khiva to be despatched to Merv, and who had preferred 
blowing out his brains to accompanying it any further.” 

This 17 th battalion, therefore, was sent to Khiva from 
Samarcand in the autumn of 1883, to take part in the 
occupation of Merv. As soon as Alikhanoff induced the 
Merv Tekkes to submit, it marched from Khiva to Merv, via 
Tchardjui, on the Oxus, and now forms part of the regular 
garrison of the place. Bodisco, who was home-sick, refused 
to accompany it any further, and committed suicide. The 
demonstration is clear, consequently, that Alikhanoffs swoop 
upon Merv was not a filibustering exploit, carried out by him 
and other frontier officials on their own personal responsibility. 
Alikhanoff and Komaroff were under the control of the 
Governor-General of the Caucasus, Prince Dondukoff-Korsa- 
koff. The 17th Line battalion, on the other hand, was under 
the control of General Tchernayeff, the Governor-General of 
Turkestan. The two administrations are as widely distinct 
as the governments of India and Canada. To secure the 
simultaneous action of the two administrations in support of 
a common movement, the impulse must proceed from St. 
Petersburg. As a matter of fact, the 17th battalion was 
marched to Khiva by the order of the Minister of War, and, 
to cut unnecessary argument short, the whole of the opera¬ 
tions culminating in the occupation of Merv were directed 
by the authorities at the Russian capital. 

It is well to bear in mind that although this stealthy 
movement of troops in Turkestan was not known to the 
public of this country, the military authorities in India were 
cognisant of it. Through the Hindoo traders arriving from 
Turkestan and other sources, the Intelligence Branch was 
placed in possession of information, difficult to disbelieve, 


32 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


that the Russians were moving towards the Afghan and 
Turcoman territories. The military authorities appealed to 
the Marquis of Ripon to take timely precautions against this 
movement, but their warnings were pooh-poohed and their 
counsels disregarded. 

While the Turkestan authorities were concentrating troops 
at Ivhiva to take part in the occupation of Merv, the officials 
of the Caucasus were not idle. 

In October our Minister telegraphed from Teheran that the 
Governor of Askabad, General Komaroff, had sent a force to 
the Tejend, and established a fort there. The Tejend may be 
roughly described as the midway oasis between Askabad and 
Merv. It is there that the Hari Rud or Tejend, the river water¬ 
ing Herat and Sarakhs, buries itself in the Turcoman sands. 
Although larger than the Merv oasis, it was practically 
unoccupied until after the fall of Geok Tepe. The Persians 
would not let the Mervis settle there, and the Mervis would 
not let the Persians. After SkobelefF took Geok Tepe 
General Kouropatkin pushed on to the place, and found 
there several thousand fugitives. These submitted, and 
either returned home or settled down along the Tejend river, 
Russia promising to protect them from the Persians. As the 
Tejend oasis was a no man’s land before then, their submission 
conferred upon Russia, in her opinion, a sort of right to the 
country. 

From Askabad to the Tejend oasis is about 120 or 130 miles, 
the road running first along the Russian oasis of Akhal and 
Persian oasis of Atak to Kahka, a large Atak settlement about 
80 miles from Askabad, and then turning off at right angles 
across the plain to the Tejend, 50 miles to the north. Readers 
of O’Donovan’s book will remember that the dashing Irish¬ 
man made a halt on the banks of the Tejend. He quitted 
the Persian frontier at Mehne, 53 miles to the east of Kahka, 
and traversed the 50 miles to the Tejend in a night. From 


THE SWOOP UPON MERV. 


33 


the Tejend to Merv the 80 or 90 miles’ distance is usually 
done by the Turcomans in a day or a day and a half. 

After things had settled down in Central Asia, subsequent 
to the English evacuation of Afghanistan and the Russian 
amiexation of Askabad, a small Cossack force was periodically 
sent to the Tejend. The excuse for this movement was, that 
the new settlers there were Russian subjects, and that Russia 
required a proper topographical knowledge of the oasis. 

At first the Merv Tekkes were extremely alarmed at the 
approach of the Cossacks so close to their country, and 
assembled in thousands to bar the way across the plain to 
the Merv oasis. But when, time after time, the Cossacks 
returned without advancing beyond the Tejend, they grew 
less suspicious. They were gradually lulled into a false 
security. In this manner when, at length, the Russians sent 
a larger force than usual to the Tejend, in the autumn of 
1883, the Merv Tekkes went about their ordinary occupa¬ 
tions, and made no preparations for defence. They had at 
Merv a fortress far larger and stronger than the one at Geok 
Tepe Skobeleff had nearly broken his army to pieces in 
battling his way into, and, what was more, they had cannon; 
but, not imagining that the Russians had any immediate 
designs on the oasis, they undertook no measures of defence. 

It is well to bear these facts in mind, because Russia is 
endeavouring to secure in the Badgheis district of Afghanistan 
a pouncing position similar to the one on the Tejend. Ak 
Robat is even closer to Herat than Kari Bent, on the Tejend, 
is to Merv. Russia, in 1883, lulled the Mervis until she had 
got them completely off their guard, and then she pounced upon 
their stronghold, regardless of all her assurances to England. 
In the same manner, if we let her retain the gates of Herat, 
she will wait until a favourable moment occurs, and then the 
key of India will be carried by a sudden coup de main. 

The military movement in the direction of the Tejend did 

3 


34 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


not escape notice in England. A discussion arose as to 
whether the expedition to the Tejend did not constitute a 
violation of Russia’s assurance not to advance beyond the 
limits of the last annexation. Thereupon the Journal cle St. 
Petersbourg, which must surely have told more fibs in its time 
than any existing newspaper, published an indignant denial 
of the reports in circulation. The movement of troops to the 
Tejend was not an “expedition”; it was simply a “recon¬ 
naissance.” It drew a fine distinction between the two 
expressions. An “expedition,” said the organ of the Russian 
Foreign Office, “ always goes and stops, but a reconnaissance 
always returns! ” 

Considering that Russia had already mapped every inch of 
the Tejend region, and knew through the explorations of 
Alikhanoff, Lessar, Nasirbegoff, and others, the whole of the 
surrounding country, the necessity for even a “reconnais¬ 
sance ” was not very apparent; above all, a reconnaissance by 
a force, which, according to our Minister at Teheran, com¬ 
prised 1,000 infantry, 500 cavalry, and 10 guns. 

Our ambassador at St. Petersburg, Sir Edward Thornton, 
was thereupon instructed to make enquiries at the Russian 
Foreign Office. In reply he wrote: “ His Excellency, M. 
Vlangaly, said that he was not aware of any force having 
been sent in that direction, # but he was not surprised at 
learning it. He said that on the occasion of the raid which 
had been made about two months ago into Persian territory 
by Turcoman raiders, when they carried off a number of 
cattle, &c., and, as he believed, some men, the Persian 

* The conversation took place Jan. 2nd, 1881. Yet the organ of the 
Foreign Office had said, Nov. 10th, 1883 : “II v eu en effet une reconnois- 
sance faite sur le Tejend (there has been, in fact, a reconnaissance made on 
the Tejend),” so that he could not have been totally unaware of it. How¬ 
ever, his memory brightened up when Sir Edward gave him to understand 
that we knew what was going on, although he refused to impart any infor¬ 
mation, or admit more than was squeezed out of him by our ambassador. 



/ 


THE SWOOP UPON MERV. 35 

Government had appealed to the Imperial Government to use 
their influence for the recovery of their cattle, &c., which had 
been taken. Instructions had consequently been sent to the 
commander of the forces at Askabad to do his best to meet 
the wishes of the Persian Government. M. Vlangaly sup! 
posed that it had been impossible to do so without the use of 
force, and that a small detachment had consequently been 
despatched for that purpose; but his Excellency doubted 
whether it could be nearly so large as I had mentioned, nor 
could he answer my inquiry as to the particular direction 
which the force in question would take.” 

It must not be supposed that this raid was a very large 
one, simply because the Shah had appealed to Russia for 
redress, or that the Shah could not have himself secured 
reparation if he had applied direct to the Merv Tekkes. The 
simple fact is, that Russia had not only prevented the Shah 
from administering the Atak frontier, but had also severed 
the close relations previously existing between Merv and 
Teheran. 

As is well known to readers of Oriental history, Merv was 
once a dependency of Persia. After the Russian movement 
towards India commenced from the Caspian, British diplo 
macy for years did its utmost to get the Shah to establish a 
Persian protectorate over Merv, and the Merv Tekkes to 
acknowledge it. It was a very foolish policy, because, to put 
the matter briefly and forcibly, English statesmen tried to 
place the desert lion under the control of the Persian jack¬ 
ass. A far more sensible plan was that suggested by Colonel 
Valentine Baker when he visited the Perso-Turcoman frontier 
in 1873. This was, to place the Mervis under the Afghans. 

Readers of Vambery’s delightful “Travels in Central Asia” 
cannot have forgotten the amazing instances he gives of 
Persian cowardice. A dozen or more Persians, attacked by 
two or three Turcomans, would not only throw down their 

3—2 


V 


36 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 

arms and beg for mercy, but also ask for the cords and bind 
each other prisoners, without making the slightest attempt at 
resistance. The Afghans, on the contrary, were quite a 
different people to deal with. The Merv Tekkes always 
admitted that they were braver men than themselves. 

The notion of passing under the rule of the Ameer was 
therefore not distasteful to them. After Valentine Baker’s 
return, the Government sent on a special mission to the Perso- 
Turcoman frontier Major Napier, son of Lord Napier of 
Magdala. This was what he reported home. 

“The occupation of Merv by an aggressive power will 
open the way to further extensions of influence on what has 
always been the weak side of Afghanistan, the side of Herat. 
As to the reasons underlying the evident desire of the 
Tekkes for an Afghan alliance, there is a very general im¬ 
pression abroad that an alliance with Afghanistan — the 
Afghans are their co-rcligionists — means an alliance with 
England. I received ” (from the various Tekke chiefs he saw) 
“ abundant proof of their desire for a direct connection with 
us, and I believe that they might be turned into a peaceful, 
honest, and prosperous community, and would prove a real 
strength to the border and to the empire.” 

Not long afterwards General Sir Charles MacGregor paid 
a visit to Sarakhs and Herat, and also advocated the enclo¬ 
sure of Merv within the political limits of Afghanistan; but 
his words fell flat on the ears of the authorities. England per¬ 
sisted in weaving her ropes of sand for binding Merv to Per¬ 
sia, and only left off when Russia sharply declared after the 
annexation of Askabad that she would not tolerate any more 
efforts on the part of the Shah to establish his influence there. 

An intimation, in effect, was conveyed to Persia that if she 
wished to carry on diplomatic intercourse with Merv, it must 
be done through the medium of the Askabad authorities. 
Previously the Shah and the Mervis had settled their quarrels 


V 


THE SWOOP UPON MERV. 


37 


themselves, by the short and summary process of retaliation 
one against the other, varied by occasional truces, during 
which they exchanged prisoners and hostages. The Shah had 
now to appeal to Komaroff. In this manner, Russia secured 
for herself a pretext for meddling with the affairs of Merv. 
If the Mervis failed to raid against Russia, the latter could 
always harass them by bringing them to book for their raids 
on Persia—raids, be it remembered, largely occasioned because 
Russia would not allow the Shah to put his frontier districts 
in order, and keep his own subjects from raiding against 
Merv. 

Now this particular raid mentioned by Vlangaly having 
occurred, and Persia having appealed to Komaroff for redress, 
all that the latter needed to do was, to send a message to 
Merv, when reparation would have been at once forthcoming. 
The attack the previous year on the Parfenoff surveying party 
was a far grosser outrage; yet the tribe disavowed it at once, 
on receipt of Russia’s demand for the offenders. In the 
interval Russia’s influence had become immensely more 
powerful at Merv. This is avowed by Lessar and others. 
But Russia needed a pretext, and this not to justify herself 
in the eyes of the Tekkes, but to blind England as to her 
intentions on the Tejend. She did not wish her projected 
coup de main to be frustrated by the action of England. 

On the spot, Russia did not trouble herself about the pre¬ 
text at all. When the force proceeded to the Tejend, no 
ultimatum was sent to Merv, nor was any attempt made to 
settle the matter promptly. As a matter of fact, the sufferers 
had already done that themselves. They had seized some 
camels belonging to the Mervis, and squared their own loss 
by inflicting another on their neighbours. 

Undeterred by England, therefore, Russia was able to con¬ 
solidate her position on the Tejend, and await events. By the 
end of the year everything was ready for the swoop. All that 


38 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


was now needed was some complication that would divert 
England’s gaze, and minimize the force of her indignation, on 
finding the annexation of Merv an accomplished fact. 

The occasion was found early in 1884. The long pent 
storm in the Soudan had burst, and the Government were 
seriously embarrassed. Baker Pasha had just gone to the 
East Soudan to relieve Sinkat, and General Gordon was on 
the point of starting for Khartoum. The belief was general 
that our troubles were only just commencing in the Soudan, 
and in no country was this impression stronger than in 
Russia. 

Events, consequently, were ripe for the swoop. The deci¬ 
sive moment, for which the Russian Government had deliber¬ 
ately prepared by assembling forces on the Turkestan and 
Transcaspian sides of Merv, had at length arrived. The signal 
was given for delivering the blow. 

Acting on the orders transmitted to him by General Koma- 
roff, Alikhanoff started off for Merv, accompanied by a few 
horsemen and the hero of Geok Tepe, Makdum Kuli Khan. 
Arrived there, he put up for the night at the tent of Yousouf 
Khan, one of the four chiefs of Merv, and brother to Makdum 
Kuli. Yousouf, like many of the leading men, had already 
been bought over to Russia. 

The next morning a public meeting was convened, and 
Alikhanoff read out to the people Komaroff’s ultimatum. 
Immediate submission was demanded, and, to enforce his 
threats, Alikhanoff pointed to the Tejend and announced 
the force established there to be simply the vanguard of a 
greater army, then advancing towards the oasis. 

That the submission was not a purely voluntary one, 
is proved by the following passage occurring in the Rus¬ 
sian Graphic (Vsemirnaya Illustratsia), from the pen of 
Gospodin Krijanovsky, a Russian officer of Askabad, who 
sent that paper a sketch showing the submission of the Merv 





Major Alikhanoff. 


























' 






















-» 













- 

. 





■ 




















THE SWOOP UPON MERV. 


41 


chiefs in General KomarofFs drawing-room. He says:—* 
“ General Komaroff, wishing to take advantage of the impres¬ 
sion which had been produced on the Tekkes by the despatch 
of a detachment of our troops to the Tejend, ordered Lieu¬ 
tenant Alikhanoff and Major Makdum Kuli Khan to proceed 
to Merv, and invite the Mervis to beg for mercy and become 
Russian subjects.” The Svet, which is edited by the brother 
of Komaroff, supports this by its disclosure of the threats 
which Alikhanoff used with reference to the Tejend column 
being the vanguard of an advancing army. 

Having already created a strong pro-Russian party by his 
intrigues, Alikhanoff experienced very little difficulty in 
persuading the people to accept the suzerainty of Russia. 
His arguments were no doubt strongly backed by the rene¬ 
gade, Makdum Kuli, who was probably compelled to dilate 
on the glories of Moscow, where, among other things, he had 
witnessed, within a few paces of Lord Wolseley, the feeding 
of half a million people and the review of 100,000 troops. 

According to reports prevalent in Russia, Alikhanoff 
secured acquiescence all the more readily by wrapping up his 
terms in tissue paper. He repudiated any intention of 
occupying the country with a large garrison. All that Russia 
would do if they submitted would be, to send a governor with 
two or three assistants, and things would go on the same as 
before. 

England was treated in a similar fashion. When M. de 
Giers officially informed our Ambassador of the submission 
of Merv, Feb. 15, he intimated that, in accepting it, the 
Emperor would simply send “ an officer” to administer the 
government of that region. He added that “ this officer 
would perhaps be accompanied by an escort of Turcomans ! ” 

The solitary Russian officer proved to be as expansive as 
the famous four and a-half battalions sent to Khiva a decade 
earlier. “ To give an idea of the Khivan Expedition,” said 


42 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


Count Schouvaloff to Earl Granville, January 8th, 1873, “it 
was sufficient to say that it would consist of four and a-half 
battalions.” In reality Russia sent to Khiva 53 companies 
of infantry, 25 sotnyas of Cossacks, 54 guns, 6 mortars, 
2 mitrailleuses, 5 rocket divisions, and 19,200 camels, with a 
complement of about 14,000 men. 

At the bidding of Alikhanoff, the principal chiefs and 
elders signed a parchment deed he had brought with him, 
and selected a deputation to proceed to Askabad. On the way 
the party was joined by Colonel Muratoff, the commander of 
the Tejend force, and arrived at Askabad on the 6th Feb¬ 
ruary, two days after the annihilation of Baker Pasha’s army 
at Tokar. The next morning, at 11 o’clock, the four chiefs 
and twenty-four notables took the oath of allegiance to the 
White Tsar in General Komaroffs drawing-room. 

When the ceremony was over, Komaroff made a short 
speech to them, in which he declared that now they had 
made their submission to Russia, they would find the White 
Tsar a valiant protector of their interests. “ To prove this 
to you,” he said, “I telegraphed this morning to Teheran, 
demanding that the Persians should give up to you the 
hundred camels they took the other day, and I have just 
received a message from the Shah acceding to my 
request.”* 

Not a word was said about the cattle taken from the Per¬ 
sians, which had served Russia as a diplomatic pretext for 
assembling Muratoff’s force on the Tejend. That was conve¬ 
niently consigned to oblivion. 

Russia, in a word, having made use of a Persian grievance 
to steal the independence of Merv, rounded on the Shah the 
moment the theft was accomplished, and treated him in turn 
as a delinquent. One can easily understand the Mervis ex, 
claiming, “ How great a ruler is this Russian general! He 


* Krivanovsky’s narrative. 



THE SWOOP UPON MERV. 


43 


has only got to send a message to the Shah, and the sovereign 
of Persia submits at once to his dictation ! ” 

Several days were spent in feasting, and then came the 
denouement. General Komaroff decided to proceed to Merv, 
and this was made the pretext for dispatching more troops— 
as a guard of honour!—to the Tejend. Arrived there, the 
whole available force was set in motion behind the returning 
deputation, and Fort Kari Bent being only three marches 
from Merv, the Russian army was already close to the oasis 
before its approach was known. 

The elders were the first to arrive. They confirmed the 
reports that the Russian army was advancing, and asked the 
people to take out water to the troops. A tumult arose. A 
strong party, headed by Kajjar Khan, protested against the 
invasion, and threatened to kill anybody who obeyed the 
elders’ request. They then applied themselves to the dis - 
cussion of the best means of repelling the Russian advance. 

The Merv oasis is not very large, and it is surrounded on 
all sides by barren plain or desert. Retreat from it was 
practically impossible. The Russians controlled three sides, 
and the Sariks—bitter enemies of the Tekkes—the fourth. 
To defend themselves against an invader the Tekkes had 
built an immense clay-ramparted enclosure, capable of 
accommodating the entire population with their herds and 
cattle. But there was no time to assemble the people inside 
it before the Russians arrived. The Mervis felt that they 
had no course open to them but to surrender. 

The reports current in Russia that Alikhanoff tricked the 
people into submission by promising that no garrison should 
be installed, are strongly supported by this tumult. If the 
army had been expected, the so-called “anti-Russian party” 
would have organized resistance and made a stand some¬ 
where. As it was, nothing whatever was done, and when 
the intelligence arrived that the Russians were already close 


44 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


at hand, the only thing the Mervis could do was to go out 
on horseback, and fire a few ineffectual shots into the 
column by way of a protest. 

While the excitement was still prevailing, Alikhanoff 
mtered the oasis with a sotnya of Cossacks and endeavoured 
to allay it. The attitude of the people, however, was so 
defiant that he thought it prudent to take the advice of his 
Merv friends and fall back upon the Russian army, then 
camping for the night twelve miles distant from Merv. # 

After dark Kajjar Khan, with several thousand horse¬ 
men, made an onslaught on the Russian camp, but was 
repelled with heavy loss. The next morning (March 16) the 
Russians marched early and occupied the fortress without 
serious resistance. Lessar says that altogether there were 
three fights or “skirmishes.” The Russian loss, he adds, 
was “one man.” Kajjar Khan fled to Afghanistan. 

The fortress was far too large to afford security to the 
Russian force. General Komaroff, therefore, impressed 
several thousand Mervis at once, and compelled them to 
build, under the supervision of his officers, a regular fort on 
the European principle. The completion of this sealed the 
fate of Merv. 

In reward for his succesful swoop Alikhanoff received back 
the rank of major, and all his decorations; he was also made 
Governor of Merv. Makdum Kuli was rewarded by being 
appointed head of the Tejend oasis. Komaroff received the 
Order of the White Eagle, his district was raised to the rank 
of a province equal to that of Turkestan, and he himself was 
made governor-general. 

To further add to his importance, he was assigned permis¬ 
sion to carry on diplomatic intercourse direct with the neigh- 

* Some of these particulars are taken from the narrative of a Turcoman 
eyewitness, published in an Indian paper. They curiously tally with 
Russian reports. 



THE SWOOP UPON MERV. 


45 


bouring states of Persia and Afghanistan. In other words, 
if he wished to intrigue with the Ameer without resorting to 
the instrumentality of the Foreign Office at St. Petersburg, 
he was at liberty to do so. Lessar was appointed his diplo¬ 
matic agent for this purpose. 

The news of the occupation of Merv excited a storm of 
indignation in England. At first, the artful manner in 
which the Russian Government represented the annexation 
as a “ voluntary submission ” provoked a few excuses. It 
was said that as the people of Merv themselves had asked to 
become Russian subjects the Emperor was, to a certain 
extent, justified in relieving himself of the burden of his 
assurances to England. “After all,” it was a happy ending 
to the Turcoman question, and Russia, having got Merv and 
rounded off her frontier, would trouble us no more. 

Before a week was over, however, Komaroff’s brother had 
let the cat out of the bag. The editor of the Svet , himself a 
military officer, was so proud of the cleverness displayed by 
his brother in accomplishing the swoop, that he published an ac¬ 
count of the operations on theTejend, and the audacious threats 
of Alikhanoff that had brought about the submission of Merv. 

From this account sprang the impression that Alikhanoff 
•and Komaroff had acted as fillibusters, and forced the hands 
of their Government, but the facts I have given demonstrate 
this impression to be totally wrong. It is an impression 
which has never prevailed one moment in Russia. There is 
nothing in the Svet narrative to justify its existence, and the 
account I have given of the concentration of troops in Khiva 
disposes of the notion completely. 

To be short and plain, Alikhanoff and Komaroff simply 
acted according to the instructions telegraphed to them to 
Askabad, and no more anticipated the desires, or forced the 
hand of their Government, than Lord Wolseley did when 
-lie invaded Egypt and conquered Arabi Pasha. If AlikhanofFs 


46 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


diplomacy at Merv was sliady, it was not a whit darker in 
hue than the diplomacy exercised by the Russian Minister 
for Foreign Affairs at St. Petersburg. 

The annexation of Merv was deliberately planned by the 
Russian Government, and carried out in strict accordance 
with its orders. The coup de main was totally unprovoked 
by the Tekkes; it was done in violation of a whole series of 
solemn assurances to England ; and the blow was struck in a 
treacherous and cowardly manner, dishonourable to a nation 
that had produced such a hard-hitting, fair-fighting hero as 
Skobeleff. 

When Russia annexed Askabad, I defended her action 
against the whole English Press. When the excitement took 
place over the Atrek boundary convention with Persia in 1882, 
I issued a map to Parliament and the Press, based on the new 
treaty with the Shah, showing that Russia had done no evil. 
In my various writings on Central Asia I have always justified 
her policy when I thought it fair, and have never hesitated 
to condemn the policy of England when I considered it stupid 
or selfish. 

I can fairly claim, therefore, that when I denounced the 
annexation of Merv, on the news becoming known in this 
country last year, I did so without any avowed animus as a 
Russophobe. I felt that the Emperor had broken his solemn 
promises, and the promises of Alexander II, without the 
slightest measure of justification. Nothing has been published 
in Russia since to shake this conviction, while the facts that 
have come to light have only strengthened what I believe to 
be a fair and impartial view of the transaction. 

There had been two widely distinct and clearly opposed 
views of the Russian advance, among members of the House 
of Commons, up to the time of the annexation of Merv. The 
debate that took place, when the news became known, was 
the first that found the two sides united as to the necessity 


THE SWOOP UPON MERV. 


47 


for disregarding further assurances, and opposing a firm and 
unsevered front to Russian aggression. 

According to the Newcastle Daily Chronicle , this unanimity 
was, to a certain extent, due to a pamphlet I circulated in 
the House among all the members just before the debate be- 
gan, giving an account of Merv and the results which I be¬ 
lieved would inevitably spring from the annexation. In that 
pamphlet, which served as a handbook to the debate, I drew 
particular attention to the open character of the country lying 
between Merv and Herat, and I printed in large type this 
warning:— 

“ That the annexation of Merv, being inevitably attended 
with the incorporation of the Sank Turcomans, will extend 
Russian rule up the Murghab to Penjdeh, at the foot of the 
Paropamisus, to within 140 miles of the Key of India, 
England, at the same time, being still posted at Quetta, 514 
miles from Herat.” # 

How I came to predict so correctly the second Russian 
advance, from Merv to the gates of Herat, can be best 
described in another chapter. 

* Five hundred copies of the pamphlet, “The Russian Annexation of 
Merv,” with three maps, and a frontispiece illustrative of Merv, were struck 
off in twenty-four hours. There being no time to post them, they were dis¬ 
tributed in the members’ lobby. “ Soon after the House assembled, half 
the persons in the lobby might have been seen with the orange pamphlet in 
their hands. As the House filled, a demand arose for copies among the 
minor members who had not received them, and Mr. Marvin, who was in 
the lobby, dispatched a special messenger for a hundred more. In this 
manner, when the debate actually did come off, nearly everybody used it as 
a handbook, and there can be hardly a doubt that it secured a very impor¬ 
tant effect upon the speeches, observable in the unanimity with which the 
members of both parties insisted on the necessity of trusting Russia no 
more, and the imperative need of firm and decisive measures on the part of 
the Government. During the debate, Mr. Marvin sat under the gallery, 
watching the effect of his pamphlet .”—Newcastle Chronicle, February 28tli, 
1884 . The pamphlet was translated into German; and in India an eminent 
military officer, well known for his patriotic interest in the Central Asia 
Question, published, at his own cost, an edition at Bombay, and distributed 
copies throughout the Peninsula. 



CHAPTER III. 


THE ADVANCE TO THE GATES OF HERAT. 


General Petrusevitcli’s secret survey of Afghanistan in 1878—His suggestion 
that Russia, after occupying Merv, should insert a wedge between 
Herat and Meshed—Concentration of troops at Merv—General Koma- 
roff seizes Old Sarakhs—AliklianofFs intrigues with the Sarik Turcomans 
—His attempt on Pendjdeli—Lumsden finds the Russians advancing up 
the Hari Rud, and posted at Pul-i-Khatum—Russia delays the despatch 
of General Zelenoi in order to push further towards Herat—Occupation 
of the Zulfikar Pass, Ak Robat, and Pul-i-khisti. 

W HEN, in the early part of 1881, exciting telegrams were 
arriving every day from Russia, describing Skobe- 
leff’s terrible conflict with the Tekkes at Geok Tepe, it may 
be remembered that one of those messages recorded the death 
of a general, who fell in a night assault upon the fortress. 
The name of that general was Petrusevitch. So far as I am 
aware, he was the first to suggest the idea of thrusting the 
Turcoman wedge from Merv to the Paropamisus mountains, 
and under cover of it securing the gates of Herat. 

Petrusevitch was quite a different type of officer from 
Alikhanoff or Komaroff. Honest, truthful, averse to in¬ 
trigue, and devoted to his duty, he was, in one word, a repre¬ 
sentative in actual life of that ideal of an Indian adminis¬ 
trator, which is commonly held in this country. The district 
he governed in the Caucasus for many years was a model of 
good order, and he was so deeply respected by the hill tribes, 
although not a fighting man, that when he fell at Geok Tepe 
they sent a deputation to the scene of the conflict, to beg of Sko- 
beleff thebody of the deceased general, to bury it in their midst. 
Petrusevitch was first dispatched to the Transcaspian 

48 


THE ADVANCE TO THE GATES OF HERAT. 49 


region in 1874, and there is every reason to believe that he 
pushed his explorations into Afghanistan as far south of 
Herat as Seistan. In subsequent years he undertook other 
journeys along the Perso-Turcoman frontier, from the Caspian 
to Sarakhs, and in 1879, just before he received the appoint¬ 
ment of Governor of Krasnovodsk, in succession to the 
defeated general, Lomakin, he penned an exhaustive report 
upon the Turcomans. 

In this report he traced, in dealing with the Turcoman 
tribes of the Merv-Herat region, the Afghan and Persian 
frontiers in such a fashion as to leave open the gap which 
Russia has just occupied. Up to then it had been accepted 
both in England and Russia that the Afghan dominions ex¬ 
tended from the Oxus to Sarakhs. Petrusevitch was the first 
to bulge back the frontier to the hills at the rear of Penjdeh, 
less than one hundred miles from Herat. 

A copy of this report reached me from the Caucasus, and I 
made it the backbone of a work I was then preparing on the 
Turcomans. To me this hint or claim of Petrusevitch’s 
seemed so ominous, that I drew a series of maps to illustrate 
the menace it conveyed to the security of Meshed and Herat. 

Respecting his contention I said, in translating his words 
in full:—“ Particular attention should be paid to this passage 
by political writers. The attempt to force a recognition of a 
‘no man’s land’ between Meshed and Herat is, in reality, 
nothing more than an effort to extend the Turcoman region 
wedge-fashion between Persia and Afghanistan. Russia, in 
occupying Merv, will inevitably claim the right to extend her 
power along this wedge also. The conquest of Akhal extends 
her rule to Gyaoors— the conquest of Merv ivill extend it to 
Penjdeh A* 


* “ Merv, the Queen of the World; and the Scourge of the Man-Stealing 
Turcomans.” 450 pp., 11 maps. London: W. H. Allen and Co., 1881. 



50 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


My work was published in 1881, and was purchased for 
the Government Departments in London and Simla. It 
cannot, therefore, he said that the Government were unaware 
as to the serious results that would inevitably attend an 
occupation of Merv. To prevent all possibility of Russia 
advancing her present claims to Penjdeh and other gates of 
Herat, I urged that the Afghan frontier from Sarakhs to the 
Oxus should be organized without delay, and the gap indicated 
by Petrusevitch closed up before the Russians occupied Merv. 

“Do what we can,” I wrote, “we can never prevent the 
inevitable junction of the Russian and English frontiers in 
Asia. It would be difficult to do so, even with Russia’s 
help. It is impossible without it. . . . If we wait till 
Russia enters Merv and posts Cossacks on the Paropamisus 
ridge, we shall have to accept, at the dictation of Russia, her 
delimitation of the two Empires, with the dishonourable 
drawback of having to cede the best of the India-menacing 
points to her—as the Power in possession. Since the junc¬ 
tion of the frontiers of the two Empires must some day take 
place; since we know that on the occasion of the next great 
war between the two Powers, Russia will attempt to strike at 
our Empire in India; since we have evidence beyond dispute 
that there exists an easy road of invasion—is it too much to 
demand of the rulers of our Empire that they arrange at once 
our border line in Central Asia 1 Is it too much to ask of 
thinking Englishmen that they shall individually do their 
utmost to preserve the Empire from the madness of masterly 
inactivity ? ” 

These words were written four years ago, but they pro¬ 
duced no effect upon the Government. The impression pre¬ 
vailed that a great mountain barrier, 10,000 or 15,000 feet 
high, intervened between Merv and Herat, and that even 
when the Russians secured the former they would fail to 
have easy access to the latter. 


THE ADVANCE TO THE GATES OF HERAT. 51 


Yet our ablest authorities had done their utmost to dis¬ 
abuse the minds of English statesmen of this disastrous 
error. Colonel Valentine Baker, on his return from the 
Perso-Turcoman frontier in 1873, had pointed out the ease 
with which a military movement could take place from 
Merv to Herat, up the valley of the Murghab. 

“Merv,” he said, “with its water communication nearly 
complete, lies only 240 miles from Herat, to which place it 
is the key. There can be no doubt that Merv is the natural 
outwork of Herat, with the advantage of water supply all 
the way between the two cities. Strategically, the Russian 
occupation of Merv would be, so to say, the formation of a 
lodgment'on the glacis of Herat. It would place Herat 
completely at her mercy.” 

General Sir Charles MacGregor, chief of Roberts’s staff at 
Candahar, and since then Quartermaster-General of India, 
went closer to the Paropamisus ridge than Baker, penetrating 
in 1875 to within a few miles of Herat. What he wrote 
on his return was plain enough for any man to under¬ 
stand. 

“A Russian authority, M. Tchichaclieff,” he observed in 
his Khorassan , “ declares that Herat would be in no danger 
even if the Russians were in possession of Merv, because the 
road between these places lies over an impracticable range 
of mountains. I must, however, take leave to deny this 
statement in the most decided manner. I have been to the 
Herat valley, and have followed a considerable part of one 
of the roads to Merv, and I have made the most careful 
enquiries from people on the spot who were in the constant 
habit of riding over the rest of the distance. Yet there is 
so little impression of difficulty in my mind, that I would 
undertake to drive a mail coach from Merv to Herat by this 
road.” 

Still, English statesmen persisted in placing faith in great 

4—2 


52 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 

mountain barriers between Merv and Herat, and the Duke 
of Argyll, pooh-poohing Valentine Baker and Macgregor, 
cracked an elephantine joke by telling the public not to be 
“Mervous” about the fate of “a few mud huts.” The 
Russians were welcome to Merv: when they got there they 
would be as far off India as ever. 

Much of the bad statesmanship of the time, as I have 
already said, must be ascribed to the confusion existing in 
the minds of English politicians, with regard to the double 
character of the Russian advance. There were two move¬ 
ments, from bases thousands of miles apart, running in the 
direction of India: one from Orenburg and Tashkent over 
a colossal range, 15,000 to 20,000 feet high ; the other, 
from the Caspian over a plain and occasional hills. English 
politicians, Conservative as well as Liberal, mixed up one 
with another. Because the Turkestan line of advance was 
difficult, therefore the Caspian line of advance was more or 
less impracticable. One has only to read the Candahar 
debates to see how widespread this confusion was, and how 
little even talented Conservative politicians realised the real 
bearings of the new advance. Lord Salisbury was the only 
one who thoroughly grasped the facts of the situation. 

The “Paropamisus bugbear” was finally disposed of in 
1882, when Lessar explored the country from Sarakhs to 
Herat, and discovered the mountain range, 15,000 feet high, 
to be simply a ridge of hills, with passes only 900 feet above 
the surrounding locality. Across those passes, from Sarakhs 
to Herat, and from Merv to Herat, he found that a vehicle 
could be driven without the slightest difficulty. Practically, 
there was no barrier at all intervening between Herat and 
Merv. 

Lessar’s discovery provoked great attention on the part of 
experts in this country, but nothing was done by the Govern¬ 
ment to fill in the gap to which Petrusevitch had given 


THE ADVANCE TO THE GATES OF HERAT. 53 


prominence.* The Marquis of Ripon, ignoring General 
Roberts’s appeal that he should do so, gave the Ameer a 
subsidy and some arms, hut this was all. No steps appear to 
have been taken to induce the Ameer to bulge out his Herati 
administration to the proportions indicated on English official 
maps, until after the occupation of Merv. 

We thus see that the Government were well warned as to 
the danger the gates of Herat would run of being captured 
after the conquest of Merv, and upon the Marquis of Ripon 
and the Gladstone Cabinet must rest the blame of having 
refused to take any steps to protect them. From the 
time Petrusevitch gave England the hint of what Russia 
would do with the Turcoman wedge, up to the actual 
seizure of Merv, was a clear interval of three years. That 
precious period was allowed to pass away without the 
slightest effort to organize the Afghan frontier north of 
Herat. 

Consequently, when Komaroff occupied Merv in force on 
the 16th of March, 1884, and turned his face towards Herat, 
the country lay practically open to him to the very walls of 
the Key of India. 

It was the consciousness of this that rendered the annexa¬ 
tion of such serious import to me. I knew that Petruse- 
vitch’s suggestion that Russia should advance from Merv to 
the gates of Herat had been borne well in mind by the 
Russian Government, and I was well aware that the 
Marquis of Ripon had done nothing to anticipate this move¬ 
ment. It was for this reason that, in issuing my new 
pamphlet, I printed in capital letters the warning that “ The 


* A full account of Lessar’s explorations, together with Alikhanoff’s 
narrative of his journey in disguise to Merv, was published in “ The Russians 
at Merv and Herat ” in the spring of 1883 by the writer. Most of the 
twenty-two illustrations accompanying it are from the talented pencil of 
Alikhanoff. 



54 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


annexation of Merv, being inevitably attended with the in¬ 
corporation of the Sarak Turcomans, will extend Russian rule 
to Pendjeh, or to within 140 miles of the Key of India.” 

The warning had but very slight effect upon the Govern¬ 
ment. Four or five months later the Ameer occupied 
Penjdeh, but—if the Times is to be believed—entirely on his 
own initiative. Considering the importance the Govern¬ 
ment suddenly attached to the gates of Herat after the 
Russians had occupied them, would it not have been more 
sensible to have forestalled the aggressors 1 There was no 
one to prevent the Afghans occupying Ale Robat, Zulfikar, 
and Pul-i-Khatun months and months before the advance 
from Merv took place; and, had the Government given the 
Russian menace adequate heed, they would have advised the 
Ameer to have done so instead of leaving him to act upon 
his own initiative. 

To prevent England adopting a course of this kind, the 
Russian Government embarked upon a series of negotiations, 
which dawdled on through the summer and enabled it to 
consolidate its position at Merv. 

As might be expected, when Ivomaroff occupied Merv in 
March, the feeling of the people for a time ran very strong 
against the Russians. The least impulse from without would 
have set the Turcomans in revolt. This was the proper 
period for the Ameer to have moved down the Hari Rud and 
Murghab to the limits assigned him on the Russian official 
maps—Sarakhs and Imam Bukash—and the question of 
delimitation could have been settled afterwards. Such a 
move could have been easily accomplished in a week or ten 
days. On neither river was there a man to oppose this 
advance, and it could have been effected without spilling a 
drop of blood or wasting a single rupee. Under the super¬ 
vision of two or three English officers, the occupation of the 
Badgheis territory could have been carried out in such a 



General Alexander Komaroff. 


RUSSIAN GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF THE TRANS-CASPIAN PROVINCE. 





































































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THE ADVANCE TO THE GATES OF HERAT. 57 


manner, that Russia would have been left without the 
slightest cause for just complaint. 

The Turcomans of Merv would not have resented the 
approximation of the Afghans, and if Russia had sought to 
oppose the step, we could have responded to her threats by 
an intimation of the ease with which she could be turned 
out of the district she had just annexed, contrary to the 
feeling of the inhabitants. 

But a manly and statesmanlike policy was hardly to be 
expected from a Cabinet, which by its vacillation had involved 
us in so many difficulties. In India it is an open secret that 
Sir Frederick Roberts, Sir Charles MacGregor, and other 
eminent generals, appealed in the strongest terms to the 
Marquis of Ripon to secure the gates of Herat before the 
Russians had time to advance from Merv. The Viceroy 
refused to take any action in the matter. 

Thus the sore and hostile feeling of the Tekkes was 
allowed to die away, and Komaroff was left unchecked to 
consolidate his hold upon the newly-conquered country. 

As soon as possible, the troops that had been concentrated 
in Khiva were dispatched to Merv. The Caucasus Regiment 
of Kuban Cossacks was also dispatched from the Caucasus to 
reinforce the garrison. In May Prince Dondukoff-Korsakoff 
the Governor-General of the Caucasus, himself set out to 
visit Merv. The prince travelled through Turkmenia in a 
calash, and it may be interesting to mention, that if, when 
he quitted Askabad, he had turned his course towards India 
instead of towards Merv, he could have travelled all the way 
in that same calash to the Cliaman outposts of Quetta. 

Advantage was taken of the presence of the prince to 
accept the submission of the Sarik Turcomans dwelling at 
Youletan. This place naturally belongs to the Merv oasis, 
and the annexation of the few thousand Sarik families dwell¬ 
ing there, consequently, was almost a matter of course. 


58 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


The case was different with Old Sarakhs, which was 
formally annexed by General Komaroff immediately after¬ 
wards. Sarakhs, like Merv, had been dubbed by military 
men the key of Herat. To a force advancing from Turkestan 
to Herat Merv is the key; to a force advancing from the 
Caspian the key is Sarakhs. The two points are about 80 
miles apart; Merv is 240 miles from Herat, and Sarakhs 
202. Whatever may be the views of party politicians, the 
leading military men of England and Russia have long 
regarded Sarakhs and Merv as the two keys of Herat—the 
two points where troops could concentrate and rest before 
making their final advance upon the Key of India. 

Russia, through her diplomatic organs, intimated her inten¬ 
tion of annexing Old Sarakhs in advance of the actual occupa¬ 
tion. The news excited interest second only to that provoked 
by the seizure of Merv. At this juncture, Lord Fitzmaurice 
exhibited a lamentable amount of flippant ignorance in reply¬ 
ing to questions put to him in the House of Commons. 
First, he did not appear to know, that there was such a place 
as Old Sarakhs, although it had been marked on Russian 
maps for years. Then, when the Foreign Office discovered 
the whereabouts of Old Sarakhs, the excuse was gratuitously 
put forward on behalf of Russia that the point annexed was 
of very little importance. It was only a heap of ruins ! 

What I said at the time, in contending with this view, will 
bear repetition now. “From* a strategical point of view, 
the one town is as good a base as another. To put the matter 
plainly, if London were Herat, and North and South Wool¬ 
wich Old and New Sarakhs respectively, the menace to the 
City would be just as great from the Woolwich on the one 
side of the river as from the Woolwich on the other. The 
circumstance of Old Sarakhs having been the first site occu- 


* Morning Post Leader, May 26, 1884. 



THE ADVANCE TO THE GATES OF HERAT. 59 


pied in ancient times, would appear to indicate that it is the 
best spot in the locality for a town. New Sarakhs was 
simply erected on the west side of the river by the Persians 
(who besieged and destroyed Old Sarakhs fifty years ago), 
because the river formed a protection against the Turcomans 
of Merv. Hence, although the Russians are taking posses¬ 
sion of a lot of ruins, they have presumably secured the best 
site for an administrative centre, where they will be able to 
draw away all the importance from the dirty, straggling Per¬ 
sian town lying across the water to the west.” 

The error current at the moment was the ascribing of the 
strategical significance of Sarakhs to the site of the actual 
town instead of to the locality generally. There is a danger 
that this may be repeated in the case of Herat also, and what 
I said in continuation may therefore be appropriately re¬ 
peated :— 

“Even had the Russians annexed the new town, they 
would have had to build their own cantonments, as at Tash¬ 
kent ; hence it is an altogether immaterial point whether they 
have got Old or New Sarakhs. They have secured all that 
they wanted, and all that English strategists sought to deprive 
them of—a lodgment in the Sarakhs district—and from this 
new base they will be only 202 miles, or five marches, dis¬ 
tant from Herat. Of these two hundred and two miles, 130 
are uninhabited; consequently, the Russians can roam over 
the plain to Kusan, 70 miles from Herat, without being 
checked by a single Persian, Turcoman, or Afghan. Lord 
Pitzmaurice seems to imagine that English diplomacy has 
done enough in preserving New Sarakhs from Russia, or, 
rather, that Russia has been considerate enough in taking the 
old site—for English diplomacy preserves nothing. Never 
was there a greater error. So little is Persian Sarakhs 
important as a fortified point, so little advantage has it over 
half a dozen other spots in the same locality, that General 


60 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


MacGregor recommended that the Persians should shift the 
fort some miles from the present spot. 

“Hence it is no gain whatever to England that Russia 
should have spared New Sarakhs. If she be allowed to 
settle down on the old site, she might just as well be allowed 
to have the new town as well. Seven hundred Persian 
soldiers are no menace to Russia, and directly she establishes 
herself at Old Sarakhs the Persian fort will become as value- 
less as the Martello towers on the English coast. On this 
account, looking at the matter from a broad, comprehensive, 
military and political point of view, and ignoring the barley¬ 
corn measurements of English diplomacy, the occupation of 
Old Sarakhs by Russia possesses all the significance, and 
embodies all the menace, that has been ascribed to the act by 
the ablest generals of England and Russia.” 

Apart from its military significance, Old Sarakhs was 
important politically, owing to the circumstance that the 
Afghan frontier was supposed to touch the Persian border 
near this point. For years the Persians had controlled the 
district, and Old Sarakhs was looked upon as indisputably 
theirs. The Afghan frontier was regarded as commencing 
alongside it. 

By the submission of Youletan and Old Sarakhs, Russia 
secured the whole of the region of Central Asia lying outside 
the Afghan frontier marked on Russian and English official 
maps. She obtained thereby an excellent frontier, well 
rounded off, and there was absolutely no reason why she 
should have stepped across it into Afghanistan. England was 
angry that she should have seized Merv and Sarakhs in vio¬ 
lation of her promises, but still, now that Central Asia was 
blotted out, the public were ready to condone the past. They 
admitted that there were plenty of excellent reasons to justify 
the annexation of the steppes and khanates of Central Asia, 
and so long as the Afghan frontier was respected, they were 


THE ADVANCE TO THE GATES OF HERAT. 61 


prepared to overlook all that had been done to bring che Cos* 
sack cordon flush with the Ameer’s dominions. 

On this account, England received with satisfaction the an¬ 
nouncement that Sir Peter Lumsden had been appointed to 
proceed to Sarakhs to define the Russo-Afghan frontier to 
the Oxus. In order that the work might be well done, the 
Government assigned the envoy a brilliant staff of assistants. 

Sir Peter Lumsden was an officer of thirty-seven years’ 
standing. He had seen service in various Indian frontier expe¬ 
ditions, the Central India campaign, under General R. Napier, 
and in the China war. He served with several expeditions 
against the frontier tribes between 1852 and 1856 ; was pre¬ 
sent as deputy quartermaster-general at the action of Punjhaoin 
April, 1852; at Nowadund and other operations in the Renanzi 
valley in May, 1852; against the Bori Afridis in 1853; at 
Shah Mooseh Kheyl against the Meranzi tribe in April, 
1855 ; against Bussy Khilut Alum in 1855 ; and the Meranzi 
and Kooroon expedition in 1856 (for which he received the 
special thanks of the Local and Supreme Governments). He 
was a memher of the special military Commission to Afghan¬ 
istan in 1857-58, and again received the thanks of the 
Supreme Government, and was awarded a medal with clasp- 
He accompanied the expedition to China in 1860, and was 
present at the actions of Singho and Janchow, the assault 
and capture of the Taku forts, and the advance on Pekin, in 
connection with which operations he was mentioned in the 
despatches, received a medal with two clasps, and obtained the 
brevet of major. His latest active service was with the Bhotan 
field force in 1865, where he gained an additional clasp. 
Prom the foregoing summary of his career it will be seen 
that the Commissioner possessed a considerable experience of 
Afghanistan and frontier affairs. He was also a member of 
the Indian Council. 

In India the appointment provoked expressions of dis- 


62 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


appointment. The Press, almost without exception, had 
selected General Sir Charles MacGregor for the task. This 
gallant and distinguished officer, the Skobeleff of India, 
possessed special qualifications for the mission. He had seen 
as much fighting-service as Lumsden, and while the active 
military operations of the latter had terminated in 1860 
MacGregor had participated in warfare so recently as 1879-81, 
acting as chief of the staff to General Roberts in Afghanistan. 
His reputation, therefore, stood high in Russia. 

I saw “ therefore,” because, while for our Afghan war as a 
whole Russia entertains a contempt, Roberts’s operations 
have always been singled out for special admiration. 
Skobeleff, and all of Skobeleff’s set, were never tired of 
extolling the march from Cabul to Candahar. “It was a 
splendid march,” said Skobeleff to me. “It was a grand 
operation of war,” said Grodekoff. When I attended Sko¬ 
beleff’s funeral, I was repeatedly questioned about the march 
by his officers, and Roberts’s name was never mentioned 
without respect and admiration. 

Skobeleff always thought that he should some day lead an 
army against India. His opponent in that case, he believed, 
would be Roberts. Being a great man, in every sense of the 
term, and not a mere military wasp, like our arch-hater, 
General Soboleff, he took a generous interest in the for¬ 
tunes of his Indian rival, and I have every reason to believe 
that this generosity was reciprocated. I can say, at least, 
that the feeling was prevalent among Roberts’s lieutenants. 
Shortly after Skobeleff’s death, Sir Charles MacGregor, in 
expressing to me his regret at his untimely end, said that he 
admired the brilliant young Russian general so much, that 
he had been anxious to undertake a journey to Europe solely 
and expressly for the purpose of making his acquaintance. 

Besides being Roberts’s ablest lieutenant, MacGregor was 
the hero of an exploit which should endear him to every 



Major-General Sir Peter Stark Lumsden, K.C.B., C.S.L., 


COMMANDER OF THE AFGHAN BOUNDARY COMMISSION, 










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THE ADVANCE TO THE GATES OF HERAT. 65 


patriotic Englishman. In 1875, having just finished for the 
Indian Government an elaborate gazetteer of Afghanistan 
and Central Asia, which revealed the many serious gaps that 
existed in our knowledge of that region, he set out, at his own 
cost and risk, to make a survey without precedent in modern 
times. Riding from the Persian Gulf, he made his way to 
Herat, then worked round to Sarakhs, afterwards pushed 
along the Turcoman frontier to the Caspian; and when this 
3,000 miles’ ride was done, he quietly travelled on to the 
Caucasus and South Russia, and effected a survey of the 
Russian base also. Had he not been foolishly ordered 
home by the Government, he meant to have surveyed the 
country just seized by Russia, from Herat to Merv, and in 
that case the Paropamisus bugbear would have been exploded 
long before the Afghan war, and the evacuation of Candahar 
rendered impossible. 

After this grand survey, for which, I may add, he was 
snubbed instead of being thanked by the authorities, he ex¬ 
plored Beluchistan, fought alongside Roberts, and was then 
made head of the Intelligence Branch and Quartermaster- 
General of India. In India it was a matter of notoriety that 
MacGregor had studied the Central Asian Question more 
thoroughly than any military man living, and having a keen 
perception of good strategical points, it was felt that he 
would have secured for Afghanistan the strongest possible 
frontier. Hence, when the Government selected Lumsden, 
a comparatively unknown man, there was a cry of bitter dis¬ 
appointment in India. The Government, it was said, was 
going to patch up the Afghan frontier anyhow, as they had 
patched up everything else. 

As I do not know the actual reasons that impelled the 
Government to chose Lumsden and reject MacGregor, I should 
be sorry to condemn the selection. I have always had a warm 
admiration for MacGregor, which has been repeatedly ex- 


66 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT . 


pressed in my works, and I considered him the right man foi 
the task. But the Government having, from reasons of their 
own, selected Sir Peter Lumsden, it would have been un¬ 
patriotic and ungenerous to have cavilled at the appointment. 

Before Sir Peter Lumsden left for the frontier, I had the 
pleasure of a long conversation with him on Central Asian 
affairs generally. In order that it should be free and unre¬ 
stricted, it was agreed that the discussion should be confiden¬ 
tial. I am, therefore, precluded from going into details, but 
I may state that I was thoroughly pleased with the Commis¬ 
sioner’s clear appreciation of the issues at stake, and his 
determination to safeguard English interests. There were no 
traces of Russophobia in his talk, and I felt that if Russia 
were as really desirous of harmoniously arranging the frontier 
as she made out, there could be no possible hitch between 
him and his Muscovite colleague. 

I may point out one very important advantage that has 
resulted from sending Lumsden to the frontier instead of 
MacGregor. The former had published nothing on Russia 
that intriguers in this country could use against him, while the 
latter had expressed opinions in his books which, if detached 
and garbled, could have been made to convict him of Russo¬ 
phobia. Had the Skobeleff of India been therefore sent, all 
the complications that subsequently arose on the frontier 
would have been laid to his door, as a hater of Russia. This 
possibility was prevented by sending Lumsden, and not being 
able to blacken that prudent officer, the Russians have had 
to pile all the blame on the Afghans and his subordinates. i 

Very luckily, as events turned out, the Government pro¬ 
vided the envoy with a splendid staff. Let me describe 
some of the members. Among those who proceeded from 
England, or joined the General on the way to Sarakhs, were 
Major Napier, Colonel Patrick Stewart, Mr. Condie Stephen, 
and Captain Barrow. Napier, as I have already said, had 


THE ADVANCE TO THE GATES OF HERAT. 67 


been to the Perso-Turcoman frontier in 1874. He was 
there repeatedly in subsequent years on behalf of the 
Government, and thus was not only familiar with the region, 
but was also intimate with the leading Turcoman chiefs, and 
knew thoroughly the recent history of the contested country* 

Colonel Patrick Stewart was an Indian officer who had 
done a very patriotic thing in 1880. At that time Skobeleff 
was massing his forces for the purpose, it was believed, of 
marching to Merv ; and, in spite of the excitement provoked 
in this country thereby, the Government resolutely refused to 
send anybody to the frontier to find out what he was 
actually doing. Whereupon, Colonel Patrick Stewart, being 
at home on furlough, quietly proceeded via Turkey, at his 
own expense, to the East, and, having by a circuitous route 
reached Ispahan, doffed his European garb, and departed 
disguised as an Armenian horse dealer. Speaking Armenian 
well, and being thoroughly acquainted with Eastern habits, 
Stewart preserved his disguise so well, that when, after 
twenty-six days’ riding, he reached the frontier, close to 
Geok Tepe, and took a shop in the bazaar, he lived along¬ 
side Mr. O’Donovan three weeks without the latter being 
aware that he was an Englishman. 

At length the Government got to know that he was stalk¬ 
ing Skobeleff, and, to conciliate Russia, ordered him home; 
but they were so pleased with his conduct that they sent 
him out soon after to Khaf, a Persian town near Herat, 
where he could act as English agent for Western Afghanistan 
and watch Russia’s operations, without exposing England to 
the danger that might arise from having a political resident 
installed in the key of India. 

Stewart was acquainted with the Russian language, and so 
also was Captain Barrow, another Indian officer of great 
ability, who, after studying it at the Staff College, had gone 
to Russia and buried himself for three months at Moscow to 

5—2 





68 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


render his knowledge more perfect. There is little doubt 
that a distinguished career lies before him. The official 
Russian scholar, however, was Mr. Condie Stephen, Second 
Secretary to the Legation at Teheran. He had acquired the 
language so perfectly while attached to the Embassy at 
St. Petersburg, that he had been able to render into English 
a splendidly-spirited translation of Lcrmantoffs great poem 
“ The Demon.” He likewise had travelled along the Sarakhs 
frontier, and had been grossly insulted by a Russian official 
in 1882 in making his way to the Atak oasis, for which 
M. de Giers had made a very lame and inadequate apology. 
Napier, Stewart, and Condie Stephen were thus three frontier 
experts equal in knowledge and experience to any Russia 
could dispatch to confront them. Russia was perfectly aware 
of this. She, therefore, made no attempt to send any at all, 
and, instead, shot Gospodin Lessar into London. 

The escort and the surveying staff were furnished by India, 
and had to march through Afghanistan to Herat, and join 
Sir Peter Lumsden on the Perso-Afghan frontier. The con¬ 
tingent was composed of the following persons :— 

Chief Political Officer : Lieutenant-colonel J. West Ridge¬ 
way. Political Officers: Captain E. L. Durand, Captain C. 
E. Yate, Mr. W. K. Merk, Captain de Scessoi. Survey 
Officers: Major J. Hill, R.E.; Captain St. G. Gore, R.E.; 
Lieutenant the Hon. M. G. Talbot, R.E. Intelligence De¬ 
partment : Captain P. J. Maitland, Bombay Staff Corps; 
Captain W. Peacock, R.E. Naturalist: Dr. J. E. T. Aitchi- 
son, C.I.E. Medical Officers: Dr. C. Owen, C.I.E .; Dr. 
Charles. Native Attaches: Sirdar Mahomed Aslam Khan, 
Rissaldar Balia-ud-kin Khan, Rissaldar Major Mahomed Hus* 
sain Khan, Sirdar Slier Ahmed Khan. 

Colonel Ridgeway, the officer in charge, was a man of great 
experience. He received his military training in the 98th 
Regiment, and was appointed to the political service fifteen 


THE ADVANCE TO THE GATES OF HERAT. 69 


years ago by Lord Mayo. During tlie Afghan war he acted 
as political officer to Sir Frederick Koberts, and took part in 
all his military operations. At the close of the campaign he 
was made Foreign Under Secretary to the Government of 
India. In this manner he was intimately acquainted with 
the outer politics of India, and knew thoroughly the views 
of the Government. 

Captain Durand was a son of the hero Sir Henry Durand, 
and for several years had been acting as political agent 
attached to the ex-Ameer Yakoob Khan, the ruler who con¬ 
nived at Cavagnari’s murder at Cabul. Captain Yate had 
been political agent at Kelat-i-ghilzai during the Afghan 
war, and had been besieged there by the enemy. Merk was 
a wonderful linguist, and was noted for his skill in dealing 
with hill tribes. Scessoi was a Danish officer, who had once 
served in the Shah’s army. Maitland and Talbot, Gore and 
Talbot, were Intelligence and Survey officers, noted for their 
pluck and capacity. The whole of the officers were picked 
men, and there was not one who had not participated more 
or less in hard fighting. 

As regards the native members, they were all gentlemen 
of distinguished character and antecedents, and most of them 
were Afghans. Sirdar Mahomed Aslam Khan was a brother of 
the British agent at Cabul, and had charge of the local tribal 
levies of the Khyber. Kissalder Major Mahomed Khan Hus¬ 
sain Khan had been employed for years on various delicate 
political missions. Kissalder Major Baha-ud-din Khan had 
served in every Indian campaign for thirty years, and was 
Sir Frederick Koberts’s faithful henchman at Sherpur and 
Candahar. Sirdar Sher Ahmed Khan was a cousin of the 
Ameer and a son of the present Afghan Governor of Canda¬ 
har, and had served as Kidgeway’s assistant at Cabul. These 
native colleagues of the English “ politicals ” were thus not 
only most of them old personal friends and fellow-workers of 


70 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 

the latter, but were also closely connected with the Ameer’s 
officials at Cabul and Candahar. This was an immense advantage. 

But this was not all. The Afghan Governor of Herat, the 
Naib-el-Hakmut Mahomed Sarwar Khan, was likewise an old 
friend of Ridgeway’s. The mission was thus certain of a warm 
reception at Herat. Some troublesome tribes had to be 
passed at one section of the road (a very small and insigni¬ 
ficant section), but every assistance was to be expected from 
the Ameer’s officials. 

To protect it against those tribes and any troubles that 
might arise on the Turcoman frontier, the mission was fur¬ 
nished with an escort composed of 200 men, splendidly 
mounted, of the 11th Bengal Lancers (better known as 
“Probyn’s Horse”) and 250 bayonets of the 20th Punjab 
Infantry, than which no native regiment in the service con¬ 
tains men of finer physique and bearing. Major Ironside Bax 
was placed in command. 

A correspondent who accompanied the mission says of 
these Indian troops, “The infantry were almost all light¬ 
hearted, cheery Afreedees of the Khyber Pass. They walk 
with extraordinary rapidity, and are big men. Their march 
is as quick as the ordinary pace of the cavalry; they are fine 
high-spirited, free-spoken men, who cheer to the pipes’ tunes 
as they march, and they come in at a swinging pace, with 
pipes playing, on each camping ground. The cavalry, Sikhs 
and Rajputs, are also splendid men, possessing excellent 
spirits, and are well equipped for the journey.” 

As usual, there were a large number of followers, and these 
swelled the total to 35 Europeans and 1,300 natives. The 
transport consisted of 1,300 camels and 400 mules. 

To avoid any chance of complications, the mission was 
ordered to proceed to Herat, not by the direct Candahar road, 
but by a more circuitous route through country comparatively 
unpopulated, and consequently free from fanatics. 


THE ADVANCE TO THE GATES OF HERAT 71 


Quitting Quetta on the 22nd September, the party reached 
Herat on November 17th, having traversed over 700 
miles, # at the average rate of eighteen miles a day, with rela¬ 
tively little hardship, and without any unpleasantness to speak 
of with the natives. The march was attended with a very im¬ 
portant discovery. A route which had been hitherto treated 
as almost impracticable, was found to be available for the 
advance of a large army. 

In other words, if the Russians penetrated to Herat by 
the easy roads Lessar had discovered, and we allowed them 
to remain there, they would be able with very little difficulty 
to advance into the heart of Afghanistan by the route opened 
up by Ridgeway’s party. Hence the discovery of the practi¬ 
cability of the Nushki route for a large force rendered Herat 
all the more significant as the Key of India. 

Arrived at Herat, Ridgeway was received in the heartiest 
manner by the Afghan Governor. “The two,” says an eye¬ 
witness, “shook each other warmly by the hands. The Naib 
was in the best of humour; his full jovial face, of an olive 
tint, had a merry look, and his large soft eyes beamed a 
genial welcome. He looked such a Governor as he was 
reported to be—mild in his rule, and in his acts showing- 
good sense and practical justice. The good spirits of the 
Naib appeared to have affected the soldiers and irregular 
troops. They performed the exercises which we could see 
they thought would please us most. They were very anxious 
to win our opinion, and there was something very naive in 
the manner in which they tried to gain it. After the Naib 
and Colonel Ridgeway had shaken hands, the Afghan infantry 
were put in fours and marched by companies in front of the 
mission, with the cavalry in the rear; with each movement 
the bugles—sweet sounds they were, too—sounded. As the 


*767 from Quetta to Kusan. 



72 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT, 


troops marched by, the buglers began to play a lively martial 
air with a French ring. The little we heard of the bugle 
march was most effective. Many of the men wore woolly 
hats, which gave them a swaggering look. They were 
warmly clad and a large number had Sniders. The cavalry 
were well equipped and capable of going anywhere.” 

Another officer present says :—“ The artillery, consisting 
of mountain guns, marched past first. The guns appeared to 
be in good order. The cavalry were rather mounted 
infantry, and, so far as dress and horse accoutrements, they 
were perfectly equipped and were much admired by our 
officers. The irregular horse were better mounted, having 
larger horses, and had a gallant appearance. They rode by 
in a free easy pace, moving as if carefully trained. The 
officers were of many types, but the one who attracted our 
attention most was a captain, who wore a felt hat, which, if 
not disrespectful, I should call a billycock hat with a stifi 
rim and a gold-coloured spike on the top. The other 
portions of the captain’s dress were equally original and 
displayed much character. He had an Irish-American look, 
which was exaggerated by a chin tuft, for the captain 
shaved his cheeks. It was a much-disputed point whether 
the captain was an Irishman or not. I think he was not ; 
but what do ye faithful of Hind say to this ? The captain 
had a bulldog, and an excellent one, that ran at his heels and 
followed him at the side of his Herat regiment. And all this 
under the shade of Sheik Abdulla Ansari in the Herat 
valley ! It only shows in another way that the Afghans are 
not all the intolerant fanatics they are supposed to be in 
England.” 

Between 2,000 or 3,000 troops mustered on the ground, and 
their march past was an event of the highest political signifi¬ 
cance. Eor the first time, after two generations of war, the 
Afghans passed in review before and saluted a British officer. 


THE ADVANCE TO THE GATES OF HERAT. 73 


While the Afghans and the Indian contingent were frater¬ 
nizing in sight of Herat, Sir Peter Lumsden was hastening 
to join them from Sarakhs. On the 19th of November, after, 
a journey of 1,000 miles from Resht, on the Caspian, he 
joined Ridgeway’s party at Kusan, 70 miles west of Herat, 
close to the Persian frontier, greatly to the relief of the 
Afghan governor, for already events had occurred which had 
occasioned him deep anxiety. 

Without waiting for the English and Russian frontier 
commissions to arrive upon the spot, General Komaroff had 
occupied Pul-i-Khatun, on the Hari Rud, and Alikhanoff 
was advancing up the Murghab. The gates of Herat were in 
danger. 

It has been said that the Afghans provoked this advance 
by seizing Penjdeh, but there are one or two facts that will 
effectually clear the ground of this contention. Penjdeh 
was occupied by the Afghans in June or July, 1884. Lums¬ 
den left London in September. The occupation of Penjdeh 
had been announced in English papers a long time before he 
left, and had been officially admitted by the English Govern¬ 
ment. There was no secret whatever about it. Why did 
not the Russian Government raise and settle the question 
before Lumsden left England? They had already selected 
their commissioner, General Zelenoi,* and there was no 
reason why he should not have arrived at Sarakhs in advance 
of Sir Peter Lumsden. Instead of which they kept him back 
on various pretexts, and when ours began to approach the 
frontier from Teheran, they pushed on their troops to Pul- 
i-Khatun, and endeavoured to carry Penjdeh by a coup de 
main. 

* It was erroneously stated, shortly after Lumsden left, that Russia had 
insulted England by appointing Alikhanoff as the frontier commissioner. 
There was no ground for this statement. Sir Peter Lumsden himself told 
me, before his departure, that Zelenoi had been chosen for the post. 




74 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


Why the Russians should have made this dash at the 
gates of Herat is capable of simple explanation. 

We have seen that for some time after their seizure of 
Merv their position at Merv was unsafe. It was in March 
when they effected their swoop; it was in May that Youletan 
submitted—the Afghans occupied Penjdeh late in June or 
early in July. Writing from Merv in May, a correspondent 
of the Tiflis KavJtaz stated that there was still a consider¬ 
able amount of discontent in the Tekke oasis. Until this 
feeling subsided more, it was hardly safe to make a fresh 
advance. 

/ 

Still, Alikhanoff was not a man to rest inactive. The 
moment the Sariks of Youletan submitted, he commenced 
intrigues with the Sariks of Penjdeh. As I have already 
stated, Youletan is geographically part of the Merv oasis. 
The 4,000 Sarik families dwelling there consequently had 
always been on good terms with the Merv Tekkes, and the 
fortunes'of the two consequently travelled together. But 
Penjdeh is 80 miles distant from Youletan, and the interval 
is an interval of desert. The fertile ground lies behind 
Penjdeh, towards Herat. Thus, geographically, Penjdeh is 
to Herat what Youletan is to Merv, and the 8,000 Sarik 
families dwelling there had not only paid tribute to the 
Ameer for years, but were the fiercest enemies of the Merv 
Tekkes.* In this manner the submission of the Youletan 
Sariks in no wise carried with it the submission of the Sariks 
of Penjdeh. Had Alikhanoff advanced at once up the 
Murghab, the Afghan Sariks would have doubtless resisted 
his attempts to annex them. 

Aware of this, Alikhanoff sought to buy them over. He 
sent agents to Penjdeh to endeavour to persuade the people 


*See Petrusevitch’s report in “Merv, the Queen of the World,” and 
Lessar’s accounts of his own explorations, in the “Russians at Merv.” 





THE ADVANCE TO THE GATES OF HERAT. 75 


to declare for Russia. Reports of this reaching the Afghan 
Governor of Herat, he marched a small force to the place, 
and, with the perfect concurrence of the inhabitants, erected 
a fort at Ak Tepe to protect them from Alikhanoff. 

Considering the treacherous trick Alikhanoff had played 
on the people of Merv, and which was better known to the 
surrounding people than to this country, was there anything 
aggressive or unwarrantable in this ? To my view, it was an 
unostentatious measure of defence of the most legitimate 
character, and no more carried with it any menace to the 
security of Merv than the English occupation of Cairo in 
1881 interfered with the interests of Timbuctoo. Russia 
was chagrined at the failure of her intrigues at Penjdeh, 
but she masked her anger for the moment. She allowed two 
months to pass, apparently acquiescing in the occupation of 
Penjdeh, and at any rate refraining from the projected 
swoop upon the other gates of the Key of India. She 
refrained, partly because she wanted to make her Merv base 
safer, but mainly because she believed that the Indian con¬ 
tingent would never traverse Afghanistan without a com¬ 
plication of some kind with the natives. 

It may be remembered that just before the departure of 
Ridgeway, frequent reports reached India of the presence of 
Russian secret agents at Cabul. How far these were true it 
is difficult to say. One thing, however, is certain. Russian 
officers in disguise have unquestionably visited Cabul since 
we installed Abdurrahman as Ameer,* and as their presence 
was attended by the receipt of similar reports in India, it is 
not improbable that some were there again last year. At 
any rate, Russia believed for a long time that the Ameer 
would refuse to allow the Indian mission to pass through his 


* See narrative of Samuel Gourovitch, interpreter to the Venkhovsky 
secret mission of 1882, in “ The Region of Eternal Fire.” 



76 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


dominions, and when his permission was given they relied 
upon the treachery of his officials and the hostility of the 
people to prevent it ever reaching Herat. When these ex¬ 
pectations failed to be realised, decisive action was decided 
upon. Moving 40 miles south of Old Saraklis, where he 
had established 200 infantry and several hundred Turcoman 
horse, General Komaroff placed a Cossack outpost at Pul-i- 
Khatun. 

This marked the beginning of the Russian advance from 
the Merv-Sarakhs bases upon the gates of the Key of 
India. 

Lumsden first heard of the movement at Meshed. Pro¬ 
ceeding to Pul-i-Khatun he found the Cossacks established 
there, and pushing on to Sarakhs (Kov. 8) obtained a pro¬ 
mise from Komaroff that there should not be any further 
advance, pending the settlement of the frontier question by 
their respective governments. Alikhanoff was with Komaroff 
at the time, and rode right through the English camp one 
day without taking any notice of the Commissioner. This 
insult caused a great talk at Sarakhs. Directly Lumsden 
left Sarakhs Alikhanoff set off for Merv, and, taking with 
him several hundred horsemen, pushed up to the Murghab, 
and tried to capture Penjdeh. 

The Afghans, however, were again equal to the occasion. 
The moment Yaluntush Khan, Governor of Penjdeh, heard 
of the advance he sent a message to Ghaus-ud-din, Governor 
of Bala Murghab (on the road to Herat), and the latter, with 
laudable promptitude and energy, started off accompanied by 
all his cavalry, with a foot soldier behind each trooper. At 
the same time he despatched a courier to Herat for reinforce¬ 
ments. Arrived at Penjdeh, he found Alikhanoff posted at 
Pul-i-khisti, a few miles distant. To him he at once sent a 
message, asking him if he meant to fight or not, frankly in¬ 
forming him that he was ready for the conflict. Alikhanoff, 


THE ADVANCE TO THE GATES OF HERAT. 77 


disappointed at being outwitted, returned a savage and in¬ 
sulting letter to the Afghan general and withdrew. Had he 
not done so, the Afghans were so excited that they would 
have probably attacked him. According to a correspon¬ 
dent, their blood was up, and they were most anxious to 
fight. 

Russia, having now cast off the veil, no longer attempted 
concealment. Her Cossacks were pushed forward as fast as 
they could, and occupied in swift succession the Zulfikar 
Pass, Ak Robat, and other avenues to Herat. 

It has been said that Afghan restlessness provoked this 
advance. This I am able to deny on unquestionable au¬ 
thority. The .Ameer’s right to Penjdeh will be dealt with 
directly. The annexation of that place, as I have demon¬ 
strated, provoked no feeling in Russia, and evoked no imme¬ 
diate reciprocal move. The real Afghan advance that Russia 
puts forward as excusing her own advance, subsequent to 
Sir Peter Lumsden’s arrival, was the advance from Penjdeh 
to Sariyazi, a short distance to the south. But what are the 
facts of the case ? There was no occupation of Sariyazi in 
the annexationist sense of the term. Hearing that the 
Russians had advanced from Sarakhs to Puli-i-Khatun, 
and tried to cut off some Afghan horsemen, led by an 
Afghan official, proceeding to join Sir Peter Lumsden, the 
plucky Governor of Bala Murghab I have just described 
thought that the Russians meant war. They were advancing 
up the Hari Rud towards Herat; perhaps they were also 
moving up the parallel River Murghab in the same direction. 
He was in charge of the Murghab line of defence. It was 
his duty to bar the road to Herat. He, therefore, like a good 
soldier, sent out an Afghan picket to Sariyazi, so that Fort 
Ak Tepe at Penjdeh might know in time of the advance of 
the enemy. Sariyazi was not on Merv soil, whether it was 
Afghan or not. Thanks to this picket, when Alikhanoff did 


78 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


advance with liis horsemen, his approach was signalled in 
time, and his coup dc main frustrated. 

Thus there was no restlessness, no aggression on the part 
of the Afghans. They set an example of good order and 
good faith to the Russians, which would have done credit to 
any civilised power. 


CHAPTER IY. 


THE QUESTION OP THE BOUNDARIES. 

Russia’s claim to the gates of Herat—The original agreement between Eng¬ 
land and Russia as to the Afghan frontier—The disputed territory— 
Discrepancies in English official maps—The frontier generally recognised 
by the two countries—SkobelefFs map of Merv and Herat, showing 
what Russia regarded as the frontier in 1881—Lessar’s mission to 
London—The Russian claims impartially considered. 

E USSIA’S claim to cave in the Afghan frontier appears 
to have been first officially made shortly after the an¬ 
nexation of Merv, when the Russian General Staff issued a 
sixpenny map, showing the Sarakhs-Oxus border bulged in 
to within 50 miles of Herat. This, I believe, was the first 
official intimation that Russia had adopted Petrusevitch’s 
idea. 

I issued a facsimile copy of the map, which found its way 
into the principal English newspapers, and the Russian claim 
was indignantly denounced. Still, none the less, the impres¬ 
sion prevailed that the map was only a feeler. Russia had 
demanded a good deal, in the hope of getting at least some 
small concession. The English Government had a reputation 
for yielding to pressure. When Sir Peter Lumsden left 
England, it was generally believed by those behind the scenes 
that England had surrendered Pul-i-Khatun. I cannot say 
how far this report was true. I simply record what impres¬ 
sion prevailed at the time. 

On this account, when the news was telegraphed from 
Meshed that the Russians had occupied Pul-i-Khatun, it fell 
to a certain extent flat. Russia had greedily taken in advance 
what had been promised her after the frontier was settled, 
and the move was simply another instance of her barbarous 

79 


80 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


manners. It was never imagined that she claimed all the 
Afghan territory to the gates of Herat. 

At length, after a deal of uneasiness and indignation had 
been expressed at Zelenoi’s unaccountable tardiness in pro¬ 
ceeding to the Afghan frontier, it became suddenly known 
in London that Russia had pushed up to Penjdeh. While 
the excitement was still in progress, the Russian Govern¬ 
ment unexpectedly dispatched the ex-railway engineer, Lessar, 
to London to expound its claims. The demands of Russia 
then became public. 

An elaborate account of those demands, with the Russian 
arguments in favour, and the English arguments against 
them, would only tire the reader. Let me, therefore, put the 
case as shortly, but as plainly, as possible. 

In 1872 elaborate negotiations took place between the 
Russian and English Governments with regard to the north¬ 
east Afghan frontier. The Russian advance then lay through 
Turkestan, and the Orenburg Cossacks had reached the Oxus. 
It was necessary, therefore, to define in some manner the Oxus 
side of the Ameer’s dominions. After long negotiations this 
was accomplished, and as since there has been no infringe¬ 
ment of that frontier, we may dismiss it without further 
remark. 

Respecting the north-west border, from the Oxus to Persia, 
the settlement was not so satisfactory, nor could it be so. 
The Russians even then had designs upon Merv, which we 
wished to treat as part of Afghanistan, and they therefore 
desired to draw the line south of it. By assenting to this, it 
was thought at the time we should surrender the Tekke oasis 
to Russia. Ultimately the matter was left open. 

Considering that the Turcoman barrier was still unbroken, 
that Herat was in a turbulent condition, and that the Merv 
region seethed with disorder, this course of action on the 
part of the two Governments cannot be severely criticised. 


• I, 

THE QUESTION OF THE BOUNDARIES. 81 

They had fixed the starting-point of the line at Khoja Saleh, 
on the Oxus, which no Russian has since contested, and if 
the term, “Persian frontier,” or “ Hari Rud,” he not a pre¬ 
cise termination, we must bear in mind that the gaze of the 
two Governments and the two nations was not fixed upon 
the end of the line, so much as upon the middle. There was 
no quarrelling about the termination of the line, only 
whether the line itself should curve north or curve south. 
If it curved north Merv was included in Afghanistan; if 
south it was excluded from it. As time passed on, the 
English and Russian Governments decided to treat it as 
excluded from Afghanistan, although this country still re¬ 
served its right to watch the fortunes of the Tekkes. 

As regards the terminal point, discrepancies undoubtedly 
exist on the official maps of the two countries, but an over¬ 
whelming majority of both fix it at Sarakhs, and it is par¬ 
ticularly noteworthy that cartographical harmony was arrived 
at during the period immediately preceding the advance upon 
Merv. The map that Skobeleff used in his Turcoman war of 
1881 traced the frontier from Khoja Saleh to Sarakhs 
identically with Arrowsmitli’s map of 1875, published in 
Rawlinson’s “ England and Russia in the East ”—that 
English official text book of the early phases of the Central 
Asian question—and this line was practically admitted by 
Russian diplomacy. 

We may say, in short, that after Russia began to push 
seriously towards Merv, the Sarakhs-Khoja Saleh line was 
tacitly adopted by the statesmen of the two countries as 
the north-west frontier of Afghanistan. It is well that there 
should be no misconception about this. Russia knew that 
England considered this line the Afghan frontier, and, 
therefore, when her statesmen gave assurance after assurance 
that they would not violate the integrity of Afghanistan, 
they were aware that England accepted those assurances in 

G 


/• 

82 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 

good faith as implying that the Sarakhs-Khoja-Salelx 
boundary would he respected. 

Nay, Russian statesmen themselves by their words fixed 
the line, and showed that they recognized Sarakhs as the 
terminal point. Let me quote one instance. Early in 1882, 
a year before the swoop on Merv took place, England 
endeavoured to persuade Russia to come to some settlement 
about the Perso-Turcoman frontier, stretching from near 
Askabad to Sarakhs. Russia in reply said, in effect, that it 
was no business of England’s, but, if she liked, she would 
discuss the settlement of the Afghan boundary beyond, from 
Sarakhs to Khoja Saleh. 

This recognition of the Sarakhs line was made during a 
special interview between Prince Lobanoff and Earl Gran¬ 
ville on February 22, 1882. Directly the Russian ambas¬ 
sador was gone, Earl Granville wrote to Sir Edward Thornton 
as follows:—“Prince Lobanoff said he had now received the 
reply of his Government. They acknowledged the con¬ 
tinued validity of the agreement formerly entered into by 
Prince Gortschakoff, by which Afghanistan was admitted to 
be beyond the sphere of Russian influence. That agreement 
was, however, as I had said, incomplete; and they were 
ready to supplement it by a settlement of the frontier of 
Afghanistan from the point where it had been left unde¬ 
fined ” (i.e.y the Oxus at Khoja Saleh) “ as far as Sarakhs.” 
Thus the Russian ambassador in London treated Sarakhs as 
the ending point. Five weeks later M. de Giers discussed 
the whole subject with Sir Edward Thornton, when the 
Russian statesman stated positively that “Russia had no 
intention of advancing towards Merv or Sarakhs, or occupy¬ 
ing any territory beyond what was already in her posses¬ 
sion.” At the end of the despatch Sir Edward Thornton 
observes:—“ M. de Giers added that, with a view to pre¬ 
venting disturbances on the borders of Afghanistan, he con- 


THE QUESTION OF THE BOUNDARIES. 83 


sidered it to be of great importance that the boundary of 
that country from Khoja Saleli to the Persian frontier in the 
neighbourhood of Sarakhs should be formally and definitely 
laid down, and that he had instructed Prince Lobanoff to 
endeavour to induce her Majesty’s Government to agree to 
the adoption of measures for that purpose.”* 

Thus Russian diplomatists, as well as the official military 
map-makers, regarded the Afghan frontier as running from 
Khoja Saleh to Sarakhs, and the only point really undeter¬ 
mined by diplomacy was, where it crossed the Murgliab river; 
but here, again, as Russian diplomatists followed their mili¬ 
tary map-makers as regards the two terminal points, it was a 
fair assumption that they followed them also in regard to the 
Murghab section. When English statesmen asked the 
statesmen of Russia for assurances, and the latter gave the 
solemn word of the Emperor that Afghanistan should be 
respected, those military maps, English and Russian, were, in 
almost every instance, and probably in all, lying on the 
tables or placed on the walls of the rooms where those 
assurances were given. To say, therefore, that Russian states¬ 
men did not have the Sarakhs-Khoja-Saleli line in view, 
and in their minds, when they made these assurances, is to say 
that they were simply playing the part of blackleg lawyers, or 
Jesuits of the darkest hue. 

Now this line not only includes Penjdeh, which is a 
good forty miles to the south of it, and Sariyazi, which is at 
least twenty, but also every point claimed or occupied by 
Russia. The Ameer, in occupying Penjdeh simply occupied 
what Russian maps showed to be in his dominions. On the 
other hand, when Komaroff, many weeks later, occupied 
Pul-i-Khatun, 39 miles from Sarakhs, he occupied what 
Russian maps excluded from Turkmenia and also placed in 


* Blue Book, Central Asia, No. 1,1884. 


G—2 




84 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


Afghanistan. He violated, in short, the integrity of the 
territory of the Ameer. And the further he subsequently 
advanced, to Zulfikar and Ak Robat, the more he violated 
that integrity. In one plain word, he invaded Afghanistan. 
He crossed the line which Russian statesmen, in giving 
their assurances, had always treated as the boundary of 
the Ameer’s dominions. Had Skobeleff marched to Merv in 
1881, his movements would have been regulated by that line, 
for it was marked on the map which he used at the seat of 
war, and which is now in my possession. It bears the 
imprint of the Russian General Staff, 1881 (copies of it exist 
at the Foreign Office), and it was given me by General 
Grodekoff, the chief of his staff at Geok Tepe, in 1882. 

The occupation of Penjcleli by the Ameer having pre¬ 
ceded by a considerable time the Russian annexation of Pul- 
i-Khatun, let me deal with it first. In starting, I would 
point out that while one or two Russian maps anterior to 
1881 show discrepancies in crossing theMurghab, they all of 
them unanimously assign Penjdeh to Afghanistan. Nor is 
this remarkable. Before the Sariks occupied the place it 
belonged to the Jemshidis, subjects of the Ameer. The 
Sariks formerly dwelt at Merv. In 1856 the Tekkes mi¬ 
grated thither, and after a struggle compelled the Sariks to 
withdraw higher up the Murghab. Part of them, as I have 
said, stopped at Youletan, geographically part of the Merv 
oasis; but the rest, numbering over 6,000 families, moved 
higher up, traversing the desert section of the Murghab, and 
drove the Jemshidis out of Penjdeh. The Jemshidis, in 
their turn, also moved higher up, to within a short distance 
of Herat. 

I 

But it is well to bear in mind that these Sariks, having 
seized Afghan lands, paid annually tribute to the Ameer for 
them. The receipts of the tribute received are contained in 
the books of the administrative of Herat, and there can be 


SCALE CF 
ENGLISH MILES 



MAP SHOWING THE DISPUTED TERRITORIES. 








THE QUESTION OF THE BOUNDARIES. 87 


therefore no doubt on this point. It has been said that the 
tribute was sometimes not paid without the dispatch of 
troops to the district, but this does not invalidate the Ameer’s 
claim. For instance, as I pen this very passage, the tax- 
gatherer has sent in to say that if my taxes are not paid 
within three days he will distrain for them. I reply, telling 
him to be hanged, but this retort to his threat of force does 
not dispose of the right of the Government to treat me as a 
subject, and seize my property if the taxes are not paid. In 
Afghanistan, and, in fact, in all eastern countries, the soldier 
is invariably the tax-gatherer. Throughout the whole of the 
Russian Asiatic dominions the Cossack goes round with the 
tax-gatherer, and, but for the Cossack, the taxes would very 
often not be paid. The collection of taxes or tribute at 
Penjdeh by the occasional dispatch of Herati horseman, there¬ 
fore, was simply part and parcel of a prevailing system in the 
East, and not an exceptional case. The contention that 
Penjdeh was not an Afghan district because the Sariks (like 
myself) were sonfetimes remiss in paying their taxes, will 
not hold water one moment. 

Having treated Penjdeh as an administrative part of Herat 
so many years, the Afghan authorities were consequently 
within their rights when they sent a small force there in June 
or July, 1884, to protect it from seizure by Alikhanoff. They 
knew how treacherously Russia had acted at Merv, and had 
every reason to believe that Alikhanoff was bent upon seizing 
Penjdeh. 

I have already said that the subsequent advance 20 miles 
to Sariyazi was simply the pushing out of a picket to give 
warning of the expected Russian approach, and that had not 
Russia seized Pul-i-Khatun, no such movement would have 
been made. There was, therefore, no provocation on the 
Afghan side. 

With regard to Russia the case was different. Pul-i-Khatun, 


88 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


and the rest of the uninhabited points up the Hari Rud 
south of Sarakhs, had never been part of the Merv territory, 
nor had the Mervis ever had control of the districts. Those 
districts were unprotected, simply because the raids of the 
Tekkes upon Persia had driven back the people to the Paro- 
pamisus or elsewhere, or had exterminated them outright. 
But although the Mervis raided across the country in pushing 
towards Persia, they never attempted to hold it; for geogra¬ 
phically it had no connection with Merv whatever. The 
argument has been put forward that the Russians had a right 
to seize it because it was “unoccupied,” but if that argument 
were to be allowed to pass, a large proportion of the coast 
line of Australia could be seized on the same grounds; and, 
applying it to Russia, hundreds of miles of coast line in the 
Pacific and on the White Sea would be open to seizure, not 
being occupied or administered. 

If the Afghans had been making preparations to march to 
Pul-i-Khatun, there might have been some justification for 
Komaroff’s occupation of it ; but they were quietly posted at 
Penjdeh, awaiting Lumsden’s arrival. Before even Lumsden 
himself could make any preparations of the kind, and give 
provocation thereby, the Russians had advanced and seized 
all the territory they could lay their hands on without 
actually dispossessing the Afghans. In some places they 
pushed behind the Afghans, as at Ak Robat, which is consi¬ 
derably to the rear of Penjdeh, and within 80 miles of Herat. 

On this account, I hold that this rush to the gates of 
Herat was a violent and treacherous proceeding, having all 
the characteristics of the swoop upon Merv. 

While the movement was being made towards Herat, “by 
the express orders of Prince Dondukoff Korsakoff,” as Koma¬ 
roff gave out, the Russian Government was effecting an 
operation of another kind, which indicates the kind of enemy 
we have to deal with. Imagining there were no experts in 


THE QUESTION OF THE BOUNDARIES. 89 


London, Lumsden having taken with him Stewart, Napier, 
and Condie Stephen to the frontier, it suddenly dispatched 
their own chief agent, Lessar, to this country. 

Russia delights in strokes of this sort. She always does 
“the unexpected.” In 1878, wdien we were increasing our 
fleet to fight her, she suddenly dispatched sailors to America 
and bought ships, with the intention of slipping out of the 
Atlantic ports and preying on our commerce. Our fleet she 
did not mean to notice at all. No country is more ready to 
discover the weak points of a rival, and to take advantage of 
them, than Russia. She displayed this clearly enough when 
she sent Lessar to London. 

I say this without making any reflection upon Lessar 
personally, for my high opinion of him has been repeatedly 
avowed in my hooks. I may even go so far to claim that 
the reputation which he possessed in the eyes of the public 
and Government of this country, on his arrival in February, 
was largely a reputation of my own creation. When Lessar’s 
name was first heard in this country in 1882, it was coupled 
with the epithet of “spy” and “secret agent.” I defended 
him against those charges. Year after year, as I described his 
successive explorations in my hooks,* and expounded their 
importance, I insisted upon the honest, sincere, and un¬ 
affected character of the clever young explorer. This opinion 
was not simply based upon what had been said to me by his 
superiors in Russia, hut upon what I had heard from Russian 
friends of mine, who knew him well. I may add that this 
attitude was not lost upon Lessar, for, shortly after his 
arrival in London, he thanked me warmly in a letter for the 
kindly manner I had always referred to his surveys. 

Hence, I wish it to be clearly understood that in saying 


“The Russian Advance,” 1882; the “Russians at Merv and Herat, ’ 1883 j 
“ Reconnoitring Central Asia,” 1884. 




90 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT 


what follows, I am inspired by no animus against Lessar, nor 
do I wish to excite any prejudice against his person. I 
criticise his mission, and the Government that created it: if 
my remarks appear to touch Lessar himself sometimes, I 
must ask that they be understood as applying to him, not as 
the eminent explorer, but as the mouthpiece of the Russian 
Foreign Office. 

Up to the time of the swoop upon Merv, Gospodin Lessar 
was simply a railway engineer. It was in that capacity he 
had been dispatched on his first survey in the direction of 
India in 1881, and he was still a Tchinovnik attached to the 
Ministry of Railways. The Russian Government was per¬ 
fectly aware of the high estimation in which this railway 
engineer was held in England. It, therefore, suddenly 
turned him into a diplomatist, and, after a decent interval, 
with equal suddenness sent him to London. 

His proper place, of course, was on the Afghan frontier, 
as adviser to Zelenoi. Russia had no intention of sending 
Zelenoi thither. She had certainly appointed him before 
Lumsden left London, but she had only done this to gain 
time to mature her military preparations for seizing the gates 
of Herat. Once those gates were seized, she no longer 
needed a delimitation commission. What she needed was to 
break down English opposition to that seizure. For this 
purpose, it was necessary to create a “cave” in English 
opinion: to divide the country on the subject, and to force 
the Government to yield to the pressure of accomplished 
facts. 

t 

To realise this treacherous aim Lessar was sent to London. 

Without dipping too deeply into a very unpleasant subject, 
I may recall to the reader the very strong pro-Russian 
influence that was exercised in 1877-78, through books, 
pamphlets, and the press, by Madame de UovikofF, otherwise 
0. K., and the group of admirers she gathered around her. 


TIIE QUESTION OF THE BOUNDARIES. 9l 


I will not discuss whether that influence was good or had, 
hut I will point out that it was a strong influence, and that 
it exercised an effect upon English public opinion and upon 
the policy of the Government. At any rate, that, at least, 
was the impression in Russia. 

What, therefore, M. de Giers had in view when he 
dispatched this amiable young traveller, Lesser, to London 
was, the formation of another pro-Russian party. He trusted 
to winning the battle of the boundaries, not on the frontier, 
but in the midst of distracted England. 

It was rather cruel, using such a weapon against Mr. 
Gladstone. 

Eortunately, party feeling did not run so high as in 1878, 
and Lessar found when he arrived a solid block of public 
opinion opposed to his pretensions. Still he was not 
altogether without success. The Pall Mall Gazette opened 
its columns to his pen and became his mouthpiece. The 
wires of the press were pulled, and all manner of charges 
raked up against the Afghans. Even Sir Peter Lumsden’s 
mission was assailed. 

Let me give an example of some of these unscrupulous 
charges. On February 24th the Pall Mall Gazette published a 
long letter from Madame de Novikoff at St. Petersburg, in 
which that lady said that “one who is of the highest 
authority on all matters relating to the foreign policy of our 
Empire’’had told her Penjdeh had been occupied by the 
Afghans at the instigation of Mr. Condie Stephen and other 
subordinates of Sir Peter Lumsden. “I have just had a 
most interesting conversation,’’ said Madame de ISTovikoff, 
“with one who is of the highest authority on all matters 
relating to the foreign policy of our empire. ... I asked 
him to tell me quite frankly the verite male about our 
alleged advance in Herat. ‘The question,’ he replied, ‘is as 
simple as possible. We do not want Herat, and we cannot 


92 THE RUSSIANS AT TIIE GATES OF HERAT. 


get it. If we seized it, it would bring us into conflict not 
only with the Afghans but also with Persia (sic), not to 
speak of England.’ ‘But,’ I rejoined, ‘have we not already 
made a forward movement which we thought unnecessary ? ’ 
‘Yes,’ he answered ‘but do you know how this came to 
pass? Unfortunately Sir Peter Lumsden has taken with 
him two or three young fellows like Mr. Stephen, who speak 
Russian, and who imagine that they can serve their cause, or 
the cause of England, by inciting the Afghans to occupy 
positions in advance of their own frontier. The Afghans , 
acting under the instigation of these young Englishmen , 
occupied a position at Penjdeh, in territory which had never 
been under Afghan rule. . . . Our military people, 

hearing and seeing everywhere evidences of English hostility 
and English intrigues, immediately responded to the Afghan 
advance by a further advance on their own account, and 
they went further than was either prudent or useful. Thus 
a mistake has been made on both sides, but the initiative has 
been taken by the English or by those among them who 
pushed the Afghans forward to go where no Afghan had 
ever been before.” 

Now there is only one English expression that will fitly 
describe all the foregoing. That expression is a strong one, 
but it is no stronger than any judge would apply to it at a 
court of law. The whole statement is a “pack of lies.” 

If this expression seems severe, it should be remembered 
that Lumsden and his subordinates, honourable English gen¬ 
tlemen, and not intriguers like AlikhanofF, were far away 
from home when their character was thus grossly assailed, 
and that they were traduced by an intriguing agency planted 
in our midst for the purpose of enabling Lessar to secure for 
Russia what he could have never obtained by fair argument 
on the frontier. 

In the first place, it was announced in all the English and 


THE QUESTION OF T1IE BOUNDARIES. 93 


Russian newspapers before Sir Peter Lumsden, with Mr. 
Stephen, left England, that the Afghans had occupied 
Penjdeh; so that the assertion that Mr. Stephen instigated 
them to do it is absurdly mendacious. Mr. Stephen travelled 
with Sir Peter Lumsden the whole way, and it was long be¬ 
fore they reached the frontier that they heard Komaroff had 
seized Pul-i-Khatun. The two then proceeded straight to 
Sarakhs to see Komaroff and protest, and they were told 
that Komaroff had been ordered to advance by the orders of 
the Russian Government. Tims we see that the Russians 
advanced long before Sir Peter Lumsden and his rash “young 
Englishmen ” arrived on the scene, and the statement therefore 
that they egged on the Afghans and thereby provoked it, is 
an obvious falsehood. What I say of Lumsden’s own party 
applies equally to the Indian contingent. The Afghans did 
not advance an inch after the English arrived at Herat, and 
as the Pul-i-Khatun movement of Russia was made anterior 
to our arrival, it is therefore false to say that we incited the 
Afghans to aggression. 

It is unpleasant to have to say it, but Madame de Novikoff 
is given to making charges of this kind. It would be easy 
to multiply instances of her “ special pleading.” Let me quote 
a characteristic instance. In 1881, while Skobeleff was beseig- 
ing Geok Tepe, a certain Captain Butler, out of a desire for no¬ 
toriety, wrote to the Globe intimating that he had helped the 
Tekkes to fortify the place. The assertion occasioned a good 
deal of annoyance to our government, and being altogether 
unfounded, Butler was placed on the retired list. In Russia, 
what he said was never taken seriously, and not only did the 
press pooh-pooh his pretensions, but Skobeleff himself laughed 
at the idea. My conversation with him on the matter was 
published in “ The Russian Advance Towards India,” which 
book contained further the opinions of Grodekoff, &c., com¬ 
pletely disposing of Butler’s claim. Hot long afterwards 


94 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


Madame do Eovikoff published a work called “ Skobeleff and 
the Panslavist Cause. ” In this she embodied the whole of 
my conversation with Skobeleff, but suppressed the bit about 
Butler. Then at the end, when she made an onslaught on 
Rawlinson and the Russophobes, she penned this assertion :— 
“The Atrek frontier was the line along which your Central 
Asians and ours elected to light. An English officer, Butler, 
fortified Geolz Tepe, ! ” 

Yet O.K. knew when she penned this passage that Butler 
did not fortify Geok Tepe, and that her idol, Skobeleff, who 
was surely a good judge, had declared he had not. But she 
wanted to make a case against England, and was ready to 
write that black was white, and white was black, in order to 
further her ends. 

The Pall Mall Gazette proved an efficient organ for the 
pro-Russian party. Day after day it formulated the charges 
against the Afghans, and suppressed facts that clashed at all 
with its views. An illustration may be given of this. On 
February 27th it published an article, entitled, “Is Penjdeh 
in Afghanistan 1 —By a Russian ” (ascribed by the Moscow 
Gazette to Lessar), in which an elaborate attempt was made 
by references to faulty, obsolete English maps, and the works 
of two or three careless authors, to prove that Penjdeh was 
not in the Ameer’s dominions. I thereupon wrote a short 
letter stating the facts about the Russian official maps I have 
mentioned, and which Lessar had ignored, and I enclosed a 
facsimile sketch of the frontier on Skobeleffs map. Both of 
these were suppressed. 

But this was only a minor matter. On the 12th of March 
it published a special article, with a map, in which it claimed 
that Lessar’s demands were moderate, on the ground that I 
myself had assigned to Afghanistan a frontier line in 1881 
further south than the one he proposed ! 

I have already spoken of Petrusevitch’s idea of thrusting 


THE QUESTION OF THE BOUNDARIES. 95 


a wedge from Merv and Sarakhs to the gates of Herat. 
That idea, I mentioned, seemed to me so fraught with 
danger, that I wrote a book on it—“ Merv the Queen of the 
World ”—illustrating the serious character of the claim in a 
series of maps. On those maps I drew the Afghan frontier 
as Petrusevitch desired it to be, and I said on the first of 
the series that the frontier was Petrusevitch’s. The whole 
purport of the book, I should add, was to expose and de¬ 
nounce this pretention. Well, the Fall Mall Gazette , ignoring 
the whole book, tore out one of the maps, and declared that “I” 
had assigned the wedge frontier to Afghanistan, and had sup¬ 
ported it! 

How, if the Russian case was so sound, why was all this 
lying needed ? As a retort, let me mention something about 
the Pall Mall Gazette. On the 22nd February, 1884, it 
published an article with a map, in which it denounced the 
fuss about the annexation of Merv, implying it would lead 
to nothing further, and said that “ Mr. Charles Marvin and 
Mr. Ashmead Bartlett were the only two alarmists in the 
country.” In that map the Pall Mall Gazette itself traced 
the Afghan frontier as running from Sarakhs to Imam 
Bukush, north of all the country now occupied by Russia. 

It was by such artifices as the manipulation of my maps 
that the pro-Russian party in London did their best to break 
down English opposition to the Russian retention of the 
gates of Herat. Lesssar’s mission was not wholly without 
success. If he did not create a cave, he made a rift in 
English public opinion. When he first arrived the Glad¬ 
stone Government angrily demanded that Russia should 
immediately withdraw from the gates of Herat. England 
virtually presented an ultimatum. Before he had been a 
month in London the Government, yielding to the insidious 
pressure exercised at home, and the determined front made 
by Russia on the Afghan frontier, withdrew that ultimatum. 


CHAPTER Y. 


HOW HERAT IS THE KEY OF INDIA. 

Misconceptions respecting Herat—What Russian and English general 8 
really mean when they call it the Key of India—The midway camping- 
ground between the Caspian and India—Russia’s intrusion on the 
camping-ground—Character of the country claimed or occupied by 
Russia—Impossibility of severing it from Herat—No mountain barrier 
whatever between Herat and the new Russian outposts—The tribes on 
the Russo-Afghan frontier—Russia’s design on Afghan Turkestan. 

“ A BODY of European troops established at Herat, and 
A-*- standing with its front to the south-east, would 
draw upon it the attention of the whole population of India, 
in that lies the significance of a military occupation of 
Herat; and it is not without reason that a number of 
English experts, knowing India well, have expressed their 
belief that were an enemy to occupy Herat with a powerful 
force, the English army, without having fired a shot, would 
consider itself half beaten.” 

These words were penned by General Soboleff in 1882. 
He was then chief of the Asiatic branch of the General 
St.alf, and exercised a large control over the Russian military 
advance in Central Asia. Subsequently he was appointed 
Minister of War in Bulgaria, where he distinguished himself by 
his zeal in Russianizing the country, with the idea of hasten¬ 
ing the time for a fresh advance upon Constantinople. More 
recently he has rendered himself notorious by a fierce tirade 
against England, published in the Russ about a month after 
the time Komaroff and Alikhanoff insulted Sir Peter 
Lumsden at Sarakhs. 

“ Herat is a very large city, and does not cede in size to 

96 


HOW HERAT IS THE KEY OF INDIA. 97) 


Tashkent. It contains 50,000 people. Among the cities of 
Central Asia and Khorassan, Herat, by its buildings, occupies 
a place next to Meshed. The city is surrounded by walls 
twelve feet high, with a shallow ditch outside. There are 
no outer defences of any kind; nothing that would call to 
mind the fortifications of a European city. In its present 
condition, Herat is not in a position to defend itself against 
a European army, since at a mile to the north it is com¬ 
manded by heights, from which it could he bombarded by 
artillery. It is reckoned to possess immense strategical im¬ 
portance.” 

This brief account was written some years ago by General 
GrodekofF, the officer appointed by Alexander II. to act as 
chief of Kaufmann’s staff in 1878, when an attack upon 
India was projected. After peace was concluded at Berlin, 
he rode home from Tashkent through Herat, and stayed at 
the place several days. The opinions of Soboleff and Grode- 
koff, as military officers of high rank and capacity, are surely 
worth consideration; yet we have certain political flounderers 
in our midst who say that, “ After all, they doubt whether 
Herat is of any real value to India.” 

They say this, ignoring what Sir Henry Hamley, Sir 
Frederick Roberts, Sir Charles MacGregor, Lord Napier of 
Magdala, and other great English generals have spoken or 
mitten respecting the “immense strategical importance of 
Herat.” The public have their choice. On the one hand 
are the carefully-weighed opinions of a great array of brilliant 
soldiers, who have fought and bled for the Empire; on the 
other is the hare-brained chatter of a few political babblers, 
who have done their utmost to involve that Empire in its 
present complications. Now is the time for England to 
make up her mind about Herat. She can safeguard it, or 
she can let it drift into Russia’s possession. One thing, how¬ 
ever, she would do well to realise in time—if she does not 

7 


98 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


value Herat, Russia does; and Russia values it so much that, 
by hook or by crook, she means to have it. 

To a reporter of the Press Association, Lessar said, 
March 15th:—“We have no intentions on Herat, which is 
altogether out of the sphere of our action.” 

The same Lessar wrote to the Novoe Vremya in November, 
1883, when the Russian troops were already massing on the 
Tejend and in Khiva for AlikhanofFs dash upon Merv:— 
“The longer Merv remains independent, the better for 
Russia; its occupation would not be difficult, while its 
possession would be extremely unprofitable.” 

On February 29th, 1882, M. de Giers said to Sir Edward 
Thornton, using the very words employed by Lessar: “ Russia 
has no intentions whatever of occupying Merv and Sarakhs.” 
Within two years from this period of “no intentions” Merv 
was a Russian possession. 

So that it will not do to rely upon Russia’s disinterested, 
ness as a safeguard to Herat. The question, therefore, to 
consider is—Is Herat worth safeguarding, and can we safely 
allow Russia to remain in possession of its gates ? 

The city of Herat has found an eloquent historian in the 
person of Colonel Malleson, whose “ Herat: the Granary 
and Garden of the East ” ought to be read by everybody at 
this juncture. It is one of the oldest cities in the East and 
was once one of the richest. To use the words of a Persian 
geographer, “ the city has been fifty times taken, fifty times 
destroyed, and fifty times has it risen from its ashes.” Six 
hundred and sixty years ago it contained, according to the 
records of the period, 12,000 retail shops, 6,000 public baths, 
caravanserais, and water mills, 350 schools and monastic in¬ 
stitutions, and 144,000 occupied houses, and was yearly visited 
by caravans from all parts of Asia. When Chingiz Khan 
passed across the East, devastating the region, Herat is said 
to have suffered by the two stormings it experienced at his 


HOW HERAT IS THE KEY OF INDIA. 


99 


hands a loss of a million and a half of men. In subsequent 
ages its splendour revived, and it was a great and flourishing 
city down to comparatively modern times. 

Summing up in his masterly manner the career of Herat, 
Colonel Malleson says :—“ A glance at the record of the past 
will show that from time immemorial the city was regarded 
as an outlying bulwark, the possession of which was neces¬ 
sary prior to attempting the conquest of India; the holding 
of which by India or by quasi-vassal powers dependent on 
India, would render impossible an invasion of that country. 
Is was so considered by Alexander, by Mahmud and his suc¬ 
cessors, by Chingiz Khan, by Tairnur, by Nadir Shah, by 
Ahmad Shah, and by Muhammad Shah, the Persian Prince 
who attacked in 1837. In the cases of all but the last the 
possession of Herat led to the conquest of India; in the case 
of the last the successful defence of that city rendered inva¬ 
sion impossible. 

“The hasty reader may object—what can the possession of 
one city signify 1 A question of this nature touches the real 
point of the argument. Herat is called the gate of India, be¬ 
cause through it, and through it alone, the valleys can be 
entered which lead to the only vulnerable part of India. 
Those valleys, running nearly north and south, are protected 
to the east by inaccessible ranges, to the west by impracti¬ 
cable deserts. No invading army could dare to attempt to 
traverse the great salt desert, and the desert immediately 
south of it, the Dasht-i-Naubad, whilst a British army held 
Herat. As long as that army should hold Herat, so long 
would an invasion of India be impossible. In his masterly 
lecture at the Royal United Institution, in November, 1878, 
General Hamley laid down the broad principal that if England 
were to hold the western line of communication with India, 
that by Herat and Candahar, she need not trouble herself 
much about the eastern, or the Cabul line. On the same occa- 


100 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


sion, Sir Henry Rawlinson declared, in reply to a question 
put to him by Lord Elclio, that rather than allow the occupa¬ 
tion of Herat by Russia, he would venture the whole might 
of British India. That high authority saw clearly what I have 
feebly endeavoured to demonstrate in these pages—that the 
possession of Herat by Russia means the possession of that 
one line by which India can be invaded; that the possession 
of Herat by England means the annihilation of all the Rus¬ 
sian hopes of an invasion of India. Let the reader imagine 
that Candahar is the frontier British station; that between 
Herat and Candahar is a long lane, so protected on both sides 
that the man who may wish to traverse any part of it to 
Candahar must enter by Herat. Is it not obvious that the 
power which shall hold Herat will completely dominate the 
lane ? It is this which makes the possession of Herat by 
England a matter of vital consequence. 

“Another fact illustrates the enormous value of Herat. 
Place an army there, and nothing need be brought to it from 
Europe. Within the limits of the Herati territory all the 
great roads leading on India converge. The mines of the 
Herati district supply lead, iron, and sulphur; the surface of 
many parts of the country is laden with saltpetre; the willow 
and the poplar, which make the best charcoal, abound; the 
fields produce in abundance corn, and wine, and oil. From 
the population, attracted to its new rulers by good govern¬ 
ment, splendid soldiers might be obtained. 

“ Such are the military advantages presented by Herat to 
the power that shall occupy it. Should that power be an 
enemy, Herat would be to him an eye to see and an arm to 
strike—an eye to pry into every native court of Hindustan, 
to watch the discontents and the broodings of the rulers, the 
heart-burnings of their subordinates. Erom watching and 
noting to fermenting and stirring up there is but one short 
step. Every court, every bazaar, in India, would note the 


HOW HERAT IS THE KEY OF INDIA. 101 


presence on the frontier, in a position not only unassailable, 
hut becoming every day more and more capable of assailing, 
of a first-class power, the secret enemy of England, and pro¬ 
fessing the most unselfish anxiety to relieve them in their 
distress. An arm to strike, because a few years of intelligent 
rule would render the valley of the Hari Rud capable of sup¬ 
porting and equipping an army strong enough even to invade 
India. 

“In a third sense, likewise, the possession of Herat by an 
enemy would be not less dangerous to England. The roads 
converging on it, already alluded to, are traversed by caravans 
to which no other route is available. We may be sure that 
the city which successfully resisted the rivalry of Meshed 
when Meshed was backed by all the influence of the Shahs of 
Persia, will take a still higher position when supported by 
the might either of England or of Russia. The European 
power, whose influence shall be paramount in Herat, will rule 
the markets of Central Asia. More even than that. The 
possession of Herat by Russia means the exclusion of England 
from the markets of Central Asia.” 

The city stands on the right bank of the Hari Rud, from 
which water is brought by several channels. It is built in 
the form of a rectangle, the north and south faces being 
about 1,500, and the east and west faces 1,600 yards in 
length. Enclosing the city is an immense earthwork about 
50 feet high, surmounted by a wall ranging from 25 to 30 
feet, with a deep moat, which can be easily flooded from the 
Hari Rud. The citadel is situated in the centre of the city, 
and is also surrounded by a moat. There are five gates, of 
which one, however, is closed up, and each is flanked by two 
bastions. The city is bridged at each of the four gates by a 
wooden drawbridge, which is raised and lowered by mechani¬ 
cal appliances worked from inside the walls. Each face of 
the four walls is furnished with from 25 to 30 bastions. 


102 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


On the exterior slope of the embankment, supporting the 
walls, are two lines of shelter trenches, one above the other, 
carried all round the city, except where the gates are. A cor¬ 
respondent with Lumsden’s mission describes the mounted 
armament as some “twenty guns of varied calibres, besides 
numberless others lying dismounted on the ramparts.’' Twenty 
guns to defend 3£ miles of wall! The garrison consists of 
4,000 or 5,000 troops, exclusive of irregulars. 

It may be mentioned that the Russians have complete 
plans of the fortifications, obtained by General Grodekoff in 
1878. 

The estimates of the population show considerable diver¬ 
gence. The first during the present century was Christie, 
who visited the place in 1809, and reckoned the population 
at 100,000. Burnes and Sliakspeare called at Herat on 
their way north. Conolly was there in 1828-30, and gives 
65,000 as the figure; while Pottinger, in 1837-8, states the 
number at about 10,000; and Perrier, in 1845, estimated it 
as low as 22,000. Whether any of the numbers, or all of 
them, were correct is impossible to say; but since Herat is 
a rendezvous for the country people when threatened by the 
enemy, each estimate may be quite correct for the year stated. 
Later, in 1865, Pollock again gave 100,000; and in 1878 
General Grodekoff thought the approximate number was 
close on 50,000. The latter figure is now generally accepted 
by geographers. Candahar has also 50,000 or 60,000 in¬ 
habitants. These are the only two towns lying between the 
Russians and India. 

To most Englishmen Herat is associated with the brilliant 
defence of the city which Eldred Pottinger maintained in 
1837 against a Persian army of 40,000 men and 60 guns, 
commanded by Muhamad Shah. A large number of Russian 
officers participated in the siege, and an entire Russian regi¬ 
ment. Pottinger, a young Bombay artillery officer, happened 


JIOW HERAT IS THE KEY OF INDIA. 103 


to be exploring in the neighbourhood when they arrived, and 
persuading the Afghans to allow him to control the de¬ 
fence, maintained a desperate resistance of ten months, when 
the Persians retired. It may be noted that the Persians 
marched from the Caspian via Askabad and Meshed to Herat, 
by a road 550 miles long, running parallel with the one via 
Krasnovodsk and Askabad. This road was supposed to be 
the best highway of invasion to India, but Lessar’s discovery 
of the easy section from Sarakhs to Herat proved the one 
now held by the Russians to be superior. As the Russians 
are almost certain before many years are past to absorb 
Khorassan, the second Transcaspian road will also come into 
their possession. 

In 1881, when English people were still incredulous as to 
the practicability of a Russian invasion of India, I put forward 
this argument: that Persia, having in 1837 marched 35,000 
troops and 50 guns (composed of 18 and 24-pounders) from 
the Caspian to Herat, and, in 1880, Ayoub Khan 30,000 
troops and 30 guns from Herat to Candahar, to which point 
various English armies had advanced from the Indus with 
guns, therefore there was absolutely no physical obstacle to 
the marching of a powerful Russian force with heavy artillery 
all the way from the Caspian to India, The terrific moun¬ 
tain barrier many English politicians still believe in I asserted 
to be sheer moonshine. Since then this practicable line of in¬ 
vasion has been supplemented by the second that the Russians 
now hold, and of which I have said it is so flat and easy that 
one could drive a four-in-hand all the way to the outposts of 
Quetta. In the event of war, both routes would be used by 
Russia. 

Since 1856, when Persia advanced a second time and took 
Herat, for which we went to war with her and made her 
retire, the Shah’s power has been rapidly declining in Kho- 
rassan. A detachment of 2,000 or 3,000 Russian troops— 


104 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT, 


even less—planted at Astrabad and Shahrood would sever all 
communication between Teheran and the rotting, misgoverned 
Transcaspian province of Khorassan, and Russia could utilise 
its resources to the fullest extent for an attack upon Herat. 
Considering how imbecile and corrupt the Shah’s rule is 
notoriously known to be, it has always seemed in my eyes an 
astounding piece of bad statesmanship that Lord Lytton 
should have entertained for one moment in 1879 the idea of 
severing Herat from Afghanistan, and confiding it to the care 
of Hassr-ed-din. One might as well have set a mouse to 
guard a piece of cat’s-meat from a tabby. 

In its present condition the fortress of Herat is admittedly 
not strong, and it would require a considerable amount of 
exertion on the part of the officers attached to Lumsden’s 
mission to render it secure from a Russian attack. This 
admitted weakness has given rise to the remark more than 
once of late that, such being the case, we could hardly call 
it the Key of India. 

Rut this contention, which is mainly put forward by men * 
who have not taken the pains to read the arguments of 
Malleson and other authorities, or who, if they have, from 
lack of memory have forgotten them, will not bear serious 
examination one moment. A score of the ablest generals of 
the day, in Russia as well as in England, have declared 
Herat to be the Key of India. Do you think that they are 
likely to be wrong, because some mole-eyed man of peace 
has made the discovery that the defences of Herat are a little 
bit out of repair ? Admit that they are; what then ? Are 
the military resources of the Russian empire so meagre that } 
after the Tsar has seized the place, he cannot apply a few 
patches 1 

But the issue raised is a totally false one. Concentrating 
their gaze too much upon the town, men overlook the locality. 
"What is the Key of India ? On this point a deal of miscon- 


HOW HERAT IS THE KEY OF INDIA. 105 


ception prevails, which I have been doing my utmost to 
dispel for a long time.* 

In England the impression is widespread that such English 
generals as MacGregor and Harnley, and such Russian com¬ 
manders as Skobeleff and Kaufmann, have concurred in 
regarding Herat as the Key of India, solely because it is a 
great fortress, or because it may be made to be one. But 
these generals have always looked at Herat in a wider sense, 
as may be, indeed, almost inferred from the remarks I have 
quoted of Mallcson. 

Our generals and the generals of Russia value Herat, not 
solely on account of the city, but on account of the resources 
of the district in which it is situated—resources in corn and 
beef, which, if swept in to any point of the Herat district, 
not necessarily to Herat itself, would feed an army of at least 
100,000 men, and sustain them during the final advance upon 
India. It is this great camping-ground, and not exclusively 
the town of Herat, that is the Key of India. If a line be 
drawn south of Herat 100 miles to Furrah, a second west 70 
miles to Kusan on the Persian frontier, and a third 120 
miles north, behind the points occupied by the Russians, a 
rough idea may be formed of a district as fertile as England 
throughout, and possessing marvellous mineral resources. 
This is the camping-ground, this is the place of arms, which 
Russia wants, in order that she may be always able to threaten 
India. There is no such camping-ground anywhere between 
the Caspian and Herat, and none again between Herat and 
India. Hence, not without reason, have the ablest generals of 


* Let me quote two instances. A correspondent of the Times of India, 
accompanying Ridgeway’s force, wrote in November that the sight of the 
Herat fortifications disappointed him; now he had seen the place, lie 
doubted whether it was really the Key of India. On the 6th of March, Sir 
George Campbell, speaking at a lecture I gave at the Royal Aquarium, also 
questioned its being the Key of India, because “the place is very weak, and 
could be easily taken by a European enemy.” 



106 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


England and Russia designated the district the Key of 
India. 

General MacGregor put this plainly enough in his “ Klio- 
rassan,” in 1875:—“From the fort attached to the village 
I had a fine view of the valley of Herat, which stretched in 
every direction hut the south, one sea of yellow fields and 
verdant trees. Without going further, it was easy to see the 
value of Herat to any power with intentions on India, and 
to recognise the justice of the dictum which termed it the 
gate of India. Just as in the minor operations of the capture 
of a city the wise commander will give his troops a breathe, 
on their gaining the outer defences, so must every general 
coming from the west rest his men awhile in this valley. 
And no better place could be found for this purpose; abund¬ 
ance of beautiful water, quantities of wheat and barley and 
rice, endless herds of cattle and sheep, good forage, and a 
fine climate—all combine to make the Herat valley the most 
apt place for a halt before entering the desolate country 
between Furrali and Candahar.”* 

The significance of the recent Russian advance consists in 
this—that the Russians have established themselves inside 
the very limits of the Herat district; in other words, they 
have violated the integrity of the Key of India. Ak Robat, 
Pul-i-Khisti, &c., which Russia has seized, are inseparable 

* MacGregor thus defined, in 1875, why Herat was the Key of India:— 
“ Because it is the nearest and best point at which an invader could con¬ 
centrate and prepare for an invasion of that country—advantages which it 
gains from its beautiful valley, the fertility of which is unrivalled in Asia ; 
from its strategical position, which gives it the command of all the 
important roads to India; from the great strength of its fortress, it being, 
in fact, the strongest place from the Caspian to the Indus ; from its admi¬ 
rable climate, and from the prestige it enjoys throughout Asia. The 
fertility of its valley, and its capability of maintaining large forces is 
proved by the fact that it has been besieged oftener than any other city in 
Asia, and has always afforded supplies for the armies of both besiegers and 
besieged. And, it must be remembered, the first have sometimes reached 



HOW HERAT IS THE KEY OF INDIA. 107 


parts of the Key of India. Penjdeh, which they claim, is 
absolutely essential to its security. These places are included 
within the fertile zone of Herat. The Russians have crossed 
the desert zone and established themselves upon it. They 
have settled down on the edge of the great camping ground 
I have described. Shall they remain there ? That is the 
point which England has got to settle. If they do remain— 
if we resign to Russia the gates of Herat—the Alikhanoffs 
and the KomarofFs will soon possess themselves of the rest of 
the great camping-ground, and hold the Key of India. 

Most unwarrantably, without provocation on the part of 
Englishmen or Afghans, Russia has intruded on the fertile 
zone of Herat. England is within her right in demanding 
that she shall clear off. 

To excuse her seizure, she asserts the necessity for a scien¬ 
tific frontier, and contends that the one she proposes is in 
every respect as good for the Afghans as for herself. Let us 
see if that be the case. 

Round about Sarakhs, on the Hari Rud, is a certain mar¬ 
gin of very cultivable ground, broken by a stretch of less fer¬ 
tile or sterile ground, higher up the river towards Zulfikar. 
Up the Murghab another, but more thoroughly desert, district 
separates the Merv zone from Penjdeh. The Sarakhs zone 
and the Merv zone thus formed two excellent links in the 
chain of a fortified frontier, running from Askabad to Khoja 

as many as 80,000 men, and have seldom fallen below 30,000 ; while both 
have always been composed of undisciplined men, who destroyed nearly as 
much as they consumed. Besides all the positive and patent advantages 
which the place itself possesses, Russia in Herat would have an unassail¬ 
able position from which to threaten us in India, so as to compel us to keep 
large forces always ready to meet the menace, while she would be able to 
cast abroad throughout India that ‘ seething, festering, mass of disaffec¬ 
tion, the seeds of a rebellion that would still further cripple us ; she would 
altogether alienate from us the whole of the Afghans and the Persian 
Khorassanese, and would practically control for her own purposes nearly 
all their military resources.” 



108 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT , 

Saleh, on the Oxus; and the line being that recognized by 
Russian diplomacy, ought to have been insisted upon as the 
frontier by the English Government. 

As I understand, this was formally done, but in order not 
to restrict Russia to an arbitrary line, certain modifications 
were admitted to be possible. The very utmost limit of those 
concessions was Pul-i-Khatun, in the Hari Rud, and Sari- 
yazi, on the Murghab. This would have effectually secured 
Russia all the country belonging to the Sarakhs and Merv 
districts, with perhaps a trifle beyond; but the security of 
Herat would not have been so grossly assailed as it is now. 

This concession would not have altogether pleased England, 
for Pul-i-Khatun is a very important strategical point. It is 
only 80 miles from Meshed, and controls the roads leading 
thither from Central Asia. Established there, Russia secured 
a lodgment, so to say, in the Meshed district; and as her de¬ 
signs on that rich city are well known, such proximity was 
not desirable. It further meant bringing the Cossack 39 
miles nearer the Key of India. Still, as I have said, for the 
sake of an amicable settlement, the country might have toler¬ 
ated this concession. 

But Russia was not content with this. She stepped across 
this Pul-i-Khatun-Sariyazi line, and traversing the country 
beyond seized a new line of her own, beginning at Zulfikar 
and running through Ak Robat to Pul-i-khisti. This new line 
was on purely Herati ground, and concentrating what I have 
to say upon it, I will show what this advanced position is, 
and how essential it is that Russia should be compelled to 
fall back to the line which the English Government was, as 
I imagine, prepared to cede to it. 

On the map Herat is shown to have lying north of it a 
mountain range, called the Paropamisus Mountains, which 
shields the Herat valley, and is claimed by Russia to be an 
effectual barrier to the city. Russia knows that the English 


HOW HERAT IS THE KEY OF INDIA. 109 


public is slow in ridding itself of geographical errors, and she 
therefore talks plausibly of a “mountain barrier, with the 
passes in Afghan hands,” as an admirable frontier for Herat. 
But this is a trifle. She audaciously puts forward as the 
spokesman of this pretension the very man who, three years 
ago, upset geography and the policy of Russia and England 
in Central Asia, by demonstrating that the Paropamisus was 
no barrier at all! That man was Lessar. 

It is well known to politicians what a shock he adminis¬ 
tered to England in 1882, when he pushed on to Herat and 
found the Paropamisus, hitherto considered to be a mountain 
block 15,000 or 20,000 feet high, to be but hills 900 feet 
or so above the surrounding locality. Can one call a series 
of hills, three times the height of St. Paul’s Cathedral, “a 
mountain barrier ” 1 One might as well call Shooter’s Hill 
Mont Blanc. 

Let me quote an extract from the Times correspondent 
accompanying Sir Peter Lumsden, published March 12th. 
He says:—“ You will see on the map that two branches of 
the Paropamisus run from Herat across Badgheis to the Hari 
Rud—one north-west (the Barkhut Hills), and the other 
west. In reality, only the former exists—the southern branch 
of the Paropamisus is a shadow, unless, indeed, it is repre¬ 
sented by the gentle undulations of gravelly soil, covered with 
camel thorn and assafoetida, which intervene between the 
Herat valley and the latter. Thus melts away one of those 
stupendous natural obstacles to the invasion of Herat, among 
which optimist imaginations have hitherto gambolled so 
gaily.” / 

Let us have this clear. Between the Russian position, 
stretching from Zulfikar to Pul-i-khisti, north of the Paro¬ 
pamisus, and the Herat valley south of it, there is only one 
“range.” That range is full of passes, and on one of them 
(the Sar-i-Chashma) the correspondent stood, and he tells us 


110 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT . 


what lie saw, gazing in the direction of the Russian position. 
“A striking panorama unfolded itself before us. A vast sea 
of grassy billowy downs swept to the foot of the Djam 
mountains in the far west, and to the north rolled away 
as far as the eye could see, its undulating surface being only 
broken by the island hills which enclose the valley of 
Penjdeh. This, then, was the bleak, sterile, mountainous 
country which we had thought of with a shiver, when our 
eyes, tired of staring, glaring deserts, were enjoying the rich 
fertility of the Herat valley. Mountainous—as mountainous 
as the Brighton Downs ! Bleak—the climate of the Enga- 
dine in August! Sterile—groves of pistachio and mulberry 
trees, wild rose trees, real English blackberry bushes, wild 
carrots, testified to the richness of the soil, irrigated in many 
places by mountain streams of the purest water, alive with 
fish ! And this was autumn, the eve of winter; what then 
must Badgheis be in spring? Why it should be named 
Badgheis (“windy”) I know not, for since we have crossed 
the Sich Bubak we have been sheltered in its kindly bosom 
from the fierce biting blasts which never ceased to assail us 
from Seistan to Kusan. How it has obtained its reputation 
for sterility is not difficult to say. Scarcely an acre of this 
rich soil is cultivated; scarcely, I say, for a few acres to the 
north of the Chashma Sabz Pass are rudely tilled by a Turco¬ 
man, who acquainted us with his existence by rushing into 
our camp, and throwing himself on the ground with loud 
cries. It transpired that he was a servant of one Aziz Sirdar, 
an ex-Tekke chief of Merv, with whom he had fled from 
Merv when the Russian occupation was imminent. He had 
left his wife and children behind him, and was anxious that 
when we turned the Russians out of Merv we should restore 
them to him. As for Aziz Sirdar, he befriended the Ameer 
when he fled from Afghanistan and passed through Merv 
on his way to Khiva. When trouble befel Aziz Sirdar, and 


HOW HERAT IS THE KEY OF INDIA . Ill 


lie had to leave Merv, he appealed to the gratitude of Abdur¬ 
rahman Khan, who had become Ameer of Afghanistan, and 
not in vain, for he was presented with a village in the Herat 
valley and with some land in Badgheis.” 

To speak, therefore, of a mountain barrier protecting Herat 
from the Russian outposts is nonsense. It is a series of 
downs, traversed by numerous roads, which are only of any 
difficulty in one or two instances in the section immediately 
north of Herat. But there is no reason why Russia should 
take these one or two difficult roads, when there are, as Lessar 
admits, a score of better ones further west, where an advance 
can be made more easily. It would be impossible for the 
Afghans to protect the whole length of the Paropamisus, and 
the closer, therefore, the Russians get to the downs the more 
quickly they will be able to step across them into the Herat 
valley. If they retain what they have, and secure what they 
claim, the Herat valley will be practically at their mercy. 

The fertile country immediately north of the Paropamisus 
is known as Badgheis, and has always been treated as part 
and parcel of the district of Herat. It was once a populous, 
well-cultivated country, and now that the raids of the Merv 
Tekkes have ceased, tribesmen are flowing to it from all parts 
of Western Afghanistan. It has no natural connection with 
the Merv district, nor yet again with that of Sarakhs. On the 
other hand, there is an inseparable connection between 
Badgheis and the valley of Herat. 

Standing on the summit of the Paropamisus, as the Times 
correspondent recently did, the observer would naturally 
divide Badgheis into two sections* Gazing down the slopes, 
he would have on the right hand the Kuskh-Murghab 
region, the objective of the Russian advance from Merv, and 
the Hari Rud region, the objective of that from Sarakhs. The 
latter Russia claims because the Salors pasture their flocks 
there; the former she demands with the Sariks. This is 


112 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


what she calls her “ ethnographical claim.” She has annexed 
a number of the Turcoman tribes (in the case of Merv frau¬ 
dulently), therefore she has a right to the rest. If they are 
not annexed, she says that the frontier will be in a state of 
constant tumult. 

Now, let us see what these turbulent tribes really are. 
First, let us take the Salors, on whose behalf the Russians 
demand the Hari Rud section of Baclgheis. 

Once a great tribe, the Salors were shattered by the 
Persians in 1833 in punishment for their raids. After this 
they migrated for a time to the Murghab from Sarakhs, 
where they had been long established, and then settled at 
Zurabad, a district in Persia, on the west side of the Hari 
Rud, not far from Zulfikar. After a while they got tired of 
Zurabad, and returned to Sarakhs. Here the Tekkes fell 
upon them, seized their cattle and property, and carried the 
tribe off to Merv. This was in 1871. The tribe then num¬ 
bered about 3,000 families. 

These are facts taken from Petrusevitch’s report, which is 
given in full in my “ Merv.” While O’Donovan was at 
Merv, in 1881, the Salors, with the consent of the Tekkes, 
took their departure. Their proper home was Old Sarakhs, 
but the Persians would not let them settle there, and made 
them pass on to Zurabad. 

In 1882 Lessar paid them a visit and published a report, 
which is also given in full in my “Russians at Merv.” He 
confirmed Petrusevitch’s statements, and added that they 
were miserably poor. Altogether the whole Salor tribe did 
not number more than 4,000 families, of whom 2,000 only 
were at Zurabad; 1,000 were encamped with the Sariks on 
the Murghab (a number of whom appear to have subsequently 
migrated to Zurabad), 400 were on Russian soil at Tchardjui, 
200 on Afghan soil at Maimene, and 100 at Pul-i-Salar, 
close to Herat. 


HOW HERAT IS THE KEY OF INDIA. 113 


On the 17th of December, 1884, Lessar delivered a lecture 
at St. Petersburg on Merv, which I have before me now, and 
in this he added to the foregoing : “The Salors are extremely 
poor; they have scarcely any tents; they live in reed huts ; 
cattle they have scarcely any, and their principal occupation 
is agriculture.” 

Now we can smash into the lies that have gathered about 
the Russian claim. First let us put that claim in precise 
language. Russia demands the whole of the Hari Rud, or 
western half of Badgheis, including Pul-i-Khatun, Zulfikar, 
Nihalshini, and practically the whole country south of Sarakhs, 
to the Paropamisus, and east to Ak Robat, because , (1) the 
Salor tribe has from time immemorial pastured their herds 
there; (2) because the people cannot do without that pasture 
land; (3) and because the tribe is so turbulent that if it were 
not annexed there would be no peace on the frontier. 

In reply, England, basing her rejoinder on Russian facts, 
can say this :—That the Salors belong to Old Sarakhs, and as 
that is their favourite district and home, and there is plenty 
of land there, thither they ought to return. That the fact 
of their having from time immemorial pastured their flocks 
in Badgheis is untrue, for it is only since 1881 that they have 
been dwelling at Zurabad, excluding a very brief interval 
twenty years ago. That they have hardly any cattle now, 
and therefore do not need the pasture lands. That they are 
so poor and shattered that they have not perpetrated a raid, 
or been guilty of turbulence, for nearly a quarter of a century. 
Finally, that they are not camped (at Zurabad) on Afghan 
soil at all, but on Persian, and cannot be held to have the 
slightest claim to the unoccupied Badgheis district east of 
the Hari Rud. 

I might add that, so far as is known, the 2,000 or 3,000 
miserable Salor peasants at Zurabad have displayed no desire 
to become Russian subjects. But even supposing they have 

8 


114 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


acquiesced, are we to surrender the whole of the west 
Badgheis district to Russia on that account, with Zulfikar 
and other gates of Herat 1 I say no ; and if you, reader, say 
no with equal firmness, the Russians shall never retain them. 

Parenthetically, hut none the less seriously, let me point 
out a great and growing danger arising out of this claim to 
the Salor Turcomans. If Russia retains the West Badgheis 
district she will also annex, obviously, Zurabad, on the 
Persian side of the Hari Rud, and we have no knowledge as 
to how far that annexation may stretch. In all probability 
it will extend up to within a short distance of Meshed, 
because Petrusevitch, who first gave the hint to Russia to 
push the wedge from Sarakhs and Merv to Herat, urged also 
that the Persian frontier should be bulged in from the Hari 
Rud to the capital of Ivhorassan.* 

Therefore, let it be clearly understood that if we yield 
Zulfikar and the western gates of Herat, we not only give 
Russia control over avenues within one hundred miles of the 
Key of India, but we also seal the fate of Meshed and the 
great Persian dependency of Khorassan—the golden 
country, the granary of Transcaspia. 

On that account, when England is asked to surrender a 
“few miles of barren country ” and a “mere bit of pasture 
land” on “ethnographical grounds,” it is well she should 
clearly realise what she is really asked to do. 

No diplomatists, as she should surely know by this time, 
surpass those of Russia in the art of wrapping up mendacious 
claims in cotton wool. 

Having disposed of the Hari Rud section of the Badgheis 
district, let us deal with the Murghab. The principal feeder 
of this river is the Kushk, which rises in the Paropamisus 
immediately north of Herat, within forty miles, and, flowing 


* This is shown in several maps in my “ Merv.” 



HOW HERAT IS THE KEY OF INDIA. 115 


parallel with the Hari End, joins the Murghab where Fort 
Ak Tepe controls the Penjdeh district. 

The east section of Badgheis is claimed with the Sarik 
tribe and because of that tribe. 

Now, I have already shown that the Penjdeh Sariks have 
never had any wish to be Kussian subjects, that they hate 
the people of Merv, that they are naturally separated from 
them by a band of desert intersecting the Murghab, which 
the Kussians have crossed ; that they have long been subjects 
of the Ameer, and that the lands they hold are Afghan lands. 
The Eussians, therefore, have not the shadow of a claim to 
this section. The Sariks of Penjdeh number eight thousand 
families, and, although they were once great raiders—they 
were always fighting with the Merv Tekkes—they have 
become so tame since the Eussians occupied Merv and the 
Afghans Ak Tepe, that the frontier is totally free from turbu¬ 
lence and crime. A correspondent writes from there that 
scarcely any carry arms; that they are a happy, contented, 
hard-working people, and that English officers are able to 
ride about the country provided with no weapons for self- 
defence. 

Eussian writers have stated over and over again since 
1881 that directly Eussia suppressed the raids carried on by 
the Tekkes of Akhal, the people immediately subsided into 
hard-working peasants. The same has been the case with 
the Sariks at Penjdeh. 

The contention, therefore, that Eussia must annex the 
Sariks, to keep them quiet, is preposterous. What is really 
wanted is some one to annex the Eussians, to keep them 
quiet. They are the “turbulent tribes” on the Afghan 
frontier. 

The special correspondent of the Daily Neivs writes from 
Penjdeh, Dec. 7, that he arrived there, expecting to find 
the Sariks savage monsters. “There they were before us 

8—2 


116 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


working in their fields, peaceable, good-natured, and smiling 
fellows. We had seen them at work for some days back, 
and found them a simple, harmless people. . . . The 

chiefs of the Sariks have manifested the most friendly feel¬ 
ings towards us. They all express themselves as being most 
friendly, not only to the Ameer, but also to the British 
Government.” 

Now, since the eight thousand Sarik families at Penjdeh 
are quite content with Afghan rule, and are altogether averse 
to Russia, why should this country hand them over to the 
Tsar, on “ ethnographical grounds,” for the sake of a frontier 
which Russian officials candidly admit among themselves is 
only temporary ? If our prestige had not fallen so low, such 
a monstrous demand would have never been made. Russia 
has not the slightest right to Penjdeh, and if Englishmen 
put themselves shoulder to shoulder at this crisis she shall 
never have it. But there is one thing which must not be 
lost sight of. In withholding Penjdeh from Russia, we 
must insist on the evacuation of Ak Robat and Pul-i-Khisti, 
the retention of which by Russia would render Penjdeh 
practically worthless. 

It is between the Hari Rud and Kushk rivers that the salt 
lakes lie, which Russia claims with the Sarik Turcomans. If 
she has no right to the one she has none to the other. It is 
said that the tribesmen ruled by Russia cannot do without 
these lakes, but this is a wide and hazy pretension. There is 
any amount of salt in the Caspian region, and eastward of it 
towards Merv, thus securing Russia’s Transcaspian subjects, 
while, as the Sariks of Penjdeh have been the principal 
users of those lakes, “ the indispensable necessity ” of Russia 
controlling them does not appear very apparent. The amount 
of salt used by the frontier tribesmen is extremely insignifi¬ 
cant, and the fact that Russia should include the claim at all 
among her pretensions indicates how weak her case is. 


HOW HERAT IS THE KEY OF INDIA. 117 


Before dismissing Russia’s demand for Penjdeh, a few 
particulars about the locality may not be out of place. 

Ak Tepe is the controlling point of the Penjdeh district, 
and it was there that the Afghans built a fort when they 
occupied the Sarik locality last year. It is situated on a huge 
mound (hence its name “White Hill”) on a piece of flat 
alluvial ground, round which the Murghab passes in a wind¬ 
ing course before joining the Ivushk. The site is on the 
east, not on the west side of the Kuslik river, as represented 
in some maps; hence, it will be seen, the fort not only con¬ 
trols the junction of the Ivushk and the Murghab, but the 
whole country inside the two rivers up to the hills over¬ 
looking Herat. Fort Ak Tepe, with its seventeen guns, is 
thus in every sense a gate to Herat. That gate the Russians 
would have seized if the Afghans had not forestalled them. 
It is included within the territory demanded by Russia. The 
Pall Mall Gazette of March 5 thus described Fort Ak Tepe: 
—“ The squabble about this trumpery little Afghan sentry- 
box placed in the middle of the Sariks, the majority of 
whom are under Russian authority, is simply grotesque.” 
This is the pro-Russian way of putting the case. There are 
4,000 Sariks under Russia, and 8,000 under the Ameer. The 
figures I take from Lessar’s lecture delivered last year. 

The Penjdeh settlements lie south of the fort, towards 
Herat, thickly disposed round the village of Penjdeh six 
miles from Ak Tepe, and afterwards stretching forty miles 
or so higher up the Murghab to within sight of the Afghan 
stronghold of Bala Murghab. When Russian statesmen speak 
of Penjdeh, they do not mean simply the village of that 
name, but the whole Sarik district, with Fort Ak Tepe. As 
that fort is the principal military point of the district, it 
would have saved some mistakes (?) if more prominence had 
been given to Ak Tepe and less to Penjdeh. Let me cite 
one of these “mistakes.” To excuse the Russian advance, a 


118 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OE HERAT. 


certain Radical paper declared that the Afghans had advanced 
thrice towards Merv—first from Herat to Penjdeh, second 
from Penjdeh to Ak Tepe, and third from Ak Tepe to 
Sariyazi! As a matter of fact, the Afghans have only made 
one advance. They planted themselves at Ak Tepe last year, 
and it was only to “feel” a rumoured Russian advance, 
after the seizure of Pul-i-Khatun, that they threw ahead the 
temporary Sariyazi picket that successfully heralded Alikha- 
noff’s raid, and saved Ak Tepe from a surprise. 

Subsequently, however, the Russians seized Pul-i-khisti, 
or the Brick Bridge, a bridge of nine arches spanning the 
Kushk a few miles from Port Ak Tepe, and leading to the 
entire Penjdeh district. Its retention would render the 
Afghan fort almost untenable. But this is not the worst. 
They claim Chaman-i-Bed, between thirty and forty miles up 
the Kushk, and have already seized Ak Robat, a place pos¬ 
sessing an amazing supply of water between it and the Hari 
Rud at Zulfikar. If they be allowed to remain at Ak Robat 
they might just as well have Penjdeh, for they will be able 
to sever it from Herat at any moment. At Ak Robat they 
are within eighty miles of Herat. Penjdeh is variously 
stated to be from 100 to 140 miles from the Key of India. 
The Russians, thus, are a long way to the rear of the 
Afghans. 

Penjdeh is not a simple oasis, like Merv, that can be dis¬ 
severed from Herat. The Sarik settlements stretch up to 
those of the Jemshidis, and the Jemshidis again practically 
up to Herat. One might as well assert that the French 
located at Canterbury would not endanger London, as that 
the Russians at Penjdeh would not be a menace to Herat. 

The Jemshidis are very different from what they were 
when Vambery trudged through their country to Herat. 
Even Grodekoff in 1878 spoke highly of them. Writing 
from the spot, the Times correspondent attached to Lumsden’s 


HOW HERAT IS THE KEY OF INDIA. 119 


force says of them:—“They resemble the Turcomans in 
dress and manners, hut they are apparently a quiet, peaceable 
people. An English officer might safely live among them 
without any guard, and if they have only respite from raids 
and war they will doubtless spread over and multiply in the 
more healthy but deserted lands of Badgheis. They are 
hardy, clever horsemen, and every household breeds its own 
horses. When we were in Kushk the weekly fair was held; 
it was attended by many Turcomans from Penjdeh and by 
some Firuzkuliis, but by very few Hazaras, with whom the 
Jemshidis are not on very friendly terms. The Turcomans 
brought salt, rice, soap, carpets, horses, sheep, and found for 
sale in the bazaar ploughshares (of cast iron) and hatchets 
from Maimene; Russian and French loaf sugar, Austrian 
matches, also Bryant and May’s, Meshed and Bokhara silk 
and cotton goods. The greater part of the latter was Russian, 
not English—let Manchester draw its own conclusion.” 

Kushk is the central point or capital of the Jemshidis, and 
it is situated on the Paropamisus, close to Herat. There are 
about 4,000 families in the place. Telegraphing from it 
some time ago the correspondent of the Times of India said: 
“The climate and temperature are delightful. The soil is 
capable of immense fertility, and could support a large popu¬ 
lation.” Even forty years ago, Abbott, who traversed the 
Kushk valley, described it to be “highly susceptible of culture, 
and has been once well tilled.” 

If the Russians secure Penjdeh, they will have practically 
no obstruction up to Herat, except the Kushk Pass, which 
might be avoided in time of war, while in time of peace the 
intercourse existing between Penjdeh and the adjacent Afghan 
country would enable them to diffuse their influence far to 
the south of Herat. This intercourse is not to be lost sight 
of. The Sariks are not within the commercial orbit of Merv, 
but within that of Herat. It requires little imagination to 


120 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


realize the advantage Russia would gain for intrigue if we 
allowed her to obtain the district. 

On the Murghab itself Russia demands Marutchak, an old 
Afghan town twenty-eight miles above the settlement of 
Penjdeh, and eighteen from the Afghan fort of Bala Murghab. 
Marutchak, on the right or east bank of the Murghab, was 
anciently a large and prosperous town; “now,” says Mr. 
Simpson, “it is nothing but ruins. The Afghans are at 
present placing it in a state of repair. The outer wall is only 
of mud, or sun-dried bricks, and is, in some parts, in a very 
decayed condition. Over these walls the top of the citadel 
may be seen. This is one of the old mounds, of which we 
have observed similar remains in this country. It measures 
about eighty by seventy yards on the top. The old walls 
and towers are now being put in a condition of defence. 
From this citadel there is a great ramp, which runs in a 
circular form, from the north-east corner to the south-east 
corner. It is most probably the old wall, inclosing what 
had been the town at one period; the ramp has much the 
appearance of being the remains of a mud wall which has 
crumbled down into dust. The Afghans are now repairing 
it all round, so as to make it an enciente for barracks, so 
that it will accommodate troops. The outer wall, already 
described, is to be levelled, as being too large for the garrison 
which the Afghans can afford to keep in it. There are the 
remains of a few mud houses within the outer wall; but, 
with the exception of the Afghans employed on the fort, 
there are no inhabitants.” 

Bala Murghab is situated on the high road from Afghan 
Turkestan (Balkh, &c.) to Herat, and thus controls a Russian 
advance from that direction. The Ameer has recently located 
1,000 Jemshidi families there, and is doing his best to make 
it a great stronghold. If, however, the Russians retain Pul- 
i-khisti, and secure Penjdeh, they will be able to sever Bala 


HOW HERAT IS THE KEY OF INDIA. 121 


Murghab from Herat, and the whole of Afghan Turkestan will 
lie open to them. In securing the eastern gates of Herat, 
therefore, Russia will obtain a basis for grasping, in turn, 
the whole of Ameer’s dominions north of the Hindoo 
Koosh, 

The occupation of West Badgheis is a menace to Meshed; 
the occupation of East Badgheis a menace to Maimene, 
Balkh, and other outposts of Cabul. The occupation of the 
two districts jointly is a menace to the security of Herat. 
Thus the wedge which Russia has driven from Sarakhs and 
Merv to the gates of Herat opens up a vista of intrigue and 
annexation to her Ivomaroffs and Alikhanoffs, which must be 
to them and to her statesmen positively thrilling. 

Hence the quarrel is something more than a mere squabble 
over an “Afghan sentry box.” Without going into the wider 
issues, and confining ourselves to Herat, we might, to all 
practical purposes, allow the Russians to occupy the suburbs 
of Herat as let them remain where they are. All that would 
be necessary for Russia at any time would be to blockade 
Herat with a small force, and from her numerous new posi¬ 
tions she could sweep up in a few days the whole of the 
resources that render Herat of value without taking the 
trouble to fire a shot at the city. Were the resource of the 
Key of India contained inside the city of Herat there would 
be some excuse for leaving the Russians at Ak Robat and 
other Afghan points, and contenting ourselves with replacing 
the mud walls with impregnable fortifications; but, since the 
resources lie spread over the great camping ground I have 
described, stretching north and south of the Paropamisus 
Downs, England cannot but resent attempts to fasten a hold 
upon any part of it. To violate the integrity of one part of 
the Key of India is to impair the value of the whole of it. 
If we ought to fight for the whole we ought to fight for the 
part; and, since Russia seems determined to follow up every 


122 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


concession by making still more exacting demands, she really 
leaves us no other alternative than to resist her claims to the 
utmost. 

England is most decidedly in the right, and Kussia most 
decidedly in the wrong. It is better that we should fight her 
now, when she has only got 10,000 troops in the Transcas¬ 
pian region, and has not thoroughly established herself in the 
Herat district, than give in now, and have to fight her next 
year, or the year after, when she has seized the whole of the 
camping-ground, and concentrated 100,000 troops upon it to 
drive us out of India. 


CHAPTER VI. 


skobeleff’s plan for THE INVASION OF INDIA. 

SkobelefFs great aim in life—The solution of the Eastern Question on the 
Indian frontier—His plan for invading India in 1876—Adopted before 
the walls of Constantinople in 1878—Kaufmann’s advance towards 
India—Great changes in Central Asia since—Were SkobelefF alive, his 
plan would be totally different now—What it would probably be— 
Feasibility of the invasion of India from the point of view of various 
Russian generals. 

“ n^HE probability of our having to struggle for Herat, or 
to defend India from Candahar, is so remote, that 
its possibility is hardly worth considering.” 

These words were penned by Sir Henry Norman, in a 
memorandum against the retention of Candahar, September . 
20, 1880. They illustrate, in a plain and forcible manner, 
the view of the few, and now utterly discredited experts, 
who raised their voice in favour of the “ scuttle ” from Can¬ 
dahar, and invoked the spirit of faction to sanction it. 

To-day England is not only morally struggling for Herat, 
but her Sikhs with Ridgeway at Penj deli confront the Cossacks 
with Alikhanoff at Pul-i-khisti. At any moment shots may 
be fired, and then the troops that scuttled from Candahar 
will have to rush back “to defend India from it.” 

On the 10th of January, 1881, the Duke of Argyll said, in 
denouncing Lord Salisbury’s avowal of alarm at the advance 
of Skobeleff to Geok Tepe: “ We are told by the late 
Government that the danger they wished to guard against 
was the danger of a military basis to be formed by Russia on 
the Caspian. I hold that to be one of the wildest dreams 
ever entertained.” 

In four short years the “wildest dream,” which, I should 

123 


124 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


point out, was simply the sober military opinion of \ alentinc 
Baker, Major Napier, and General Sir Charles MacGregor, 
who had surveyed the proposed line of advance—in four 
short years that “wildest dream” has become a practical 
reality, and the public read, quite as a matter of course, of 
Russia’s preparations for the invasion of India. 

Whether the evacuation from Candahar was politic or not 
in 1881, one thing is certain. Down almost to the very last 
days of his Viceroyalty, the Marquis of Ripon refused to 
take serious steps to render the Afghan barrier a real bulwark 
to our Eastern Empire. The Cabinet in London moved some¬ 
what with the times, but Lord Ripon and Sir Evelyn Baring 
resisted every change. It is a matter of common notoriety at 
Simla that the appeals of our greatest generals were pooh- 
poohed, and that to the very moment of the departure of the 
Baboo Viceroy from Bombay, the advice of heroes who would 
have to defend Afghanistan to-morrow, if attacked, was con¬ 
temptuously rejected for the ear-whisperings of two or three 
insignificant men, of ignominous sentiments. 

Why those generals—who, by the way, are now the chief 
advisers of Lord Ripon’s sagacious successor—should have 
been so uneasy during the last few years, will be apparent in 
the following pages. 

Until the time of the arrival of the Stolietoff Embassy at 
Cabul, the idea of a Russian attack upon India was generally 
scouted in this country; and even those who urged the stem¬ 
ming of the Russian advance did not treat an expedition 
against us as a matter of the immediate present, but as be¬ 
longing to the future. In Russia, military opinion was more 
advanced. While war was still undeclared against Turkey in 
1876, and England was hoping that the conflict might be 
averted by peaceful diplomatic means, General Skobeleff, then 
Governor of Ferghana, the Turkestan district nearest India, 
forwarded to Kaufmann an elaborate plan for a Central Asian 


8KOBFLFFF’S PLAN FOR INVADING INDIA. 125 


campaign. Even when summoned to Europe to take part in 
the operations there, he used his utmost influence at Court 
to put the Turkestan forces in motion, and finally achieved 
nis object in sight of Constantinople, when, after several 
councils of war, it was decided that if the Congress at Berlin 
failed, an attack should be made upon India. 

Accordingly, Colonels Stolietoff and Grodekoff left the 
camp for Central Asia, the former charged with a mission to 
Shere Ali, and the latter—SkobelefFs oldest and most trusted 
friend—carrying SkobelefFs secret plans, and for himself the 
special appointment as chief of Kaufmann’s staff. One other 
agent was also sent from the camp—Pashino, an ex-diplomate, 
who had served as interpreter at Samarcand to the present 
Ameer, Abdurrahman Khan, and possessed a knowledge of 
India from a journey he had undertaken through the penin¬ 
sula a few years earlier. His mission was to proceed to India 
and secretly ascertain the condition of military and tribal 
affairs on the frontier, and afterwards push his way through 
the Khyber and join the Russian mission at Cabul. 

The outcome of the enterprise is well known. Kaufmann 
marched with the invading force to Djam, on the Bokharan 
frontier, and marched back again when the Treaty of Berlin 
became known. Stolietoff penetrated to Cabul, and occa¬ 
sioned the Afghan war. Grodekoff returned to Europe by a 
famous ride through Herat, and is now Acting-Governor of 
Turkestan. Finally, Pashino was arrested at Peshawur, and, 
in spite of his outcry, was sent back to Russia. 

Most of these facts are known to the public, but Skobe¬ 
lefFs proposed plan of operations has never received due at¬ 
tention, even at the hands of those commonly supposed to 
be interested in Central Asian affairs. Briefly, the plan was 
this. Kaufmann was to have led an army to Cabul, almost 
denuding Turkestan of its garrison, and was to have there 
organised the Afghan forces for an attack upon India, while 


126 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


Russian emissaries stirred up the natives to a mutiny. If 
the people failed to respond to the Russian appeal, Kaufmann 
was to tie the English army to India by threatening it from 
Cabul, and, in the event of a rising, he was to push on to 
the frontier, and attack the English on one side while the 
mutineers advanced and harried them on the other. Suppos¬ 
ing the attempt failed, Kaufmann was to retreat, not upon 
Turkestan, in case the sight of his shattered forces should 
cause Bokhara to rise, but upon Herat and the Caspian; 
being met on the way by a succouring army advancing via 
Askabad and Meshed. 

Such was Skobeleff s daring scheme, the revelation of which, 
since his death, has exercised a remarkable effect upon the 
imagination of Russian generals, and caused a longing to lead 
or participate in a campaign, offering so many chances of 
distinction and glory. Had the Congress of Berlin failed, 
the impression is general among Russian military men that 
Skobeleffs plan would have been crowned with success. 
Their belief in the certainty of a mutiny in India is one that 
Englishmen will not generally share, and hence the proba¬ 
bility of an actual irruption into India will be contested; 
but there is one matter upon which not much difference of 
opinion can prevail. The Afghans would have doubtless 
fallen in with the Russian plans, and by their co-operation 
tied the English troops to the frontier; thereby preventing 
the reinforcements being sent to Europe. This alone would 
have been a success of no mean order, for it is no secret that 
Russia was greatly disturbed by the idea of Sepoys being dis¬ 
patched to Turkey to assist in the defence of Constantinople. 

Strangely enough, Skobeleff’s plan of invasion has only 
excited Russia and England since his death. The actual 
march by Kaufmann towards India provoked little or no 
attention in this country, and, the details being suppressed 
in Russia, it was treated as a simple demonstration intended 


SKOBELEFF’S FLAN FOR INVADING INDIA . 127 


to give weight to Stolietoff’s mission. That it was really 
a serious move, inspired by the deadliest intentions 
against our rule in India, was only to the most limited 
degree realised even by the ablest politicians in this country. 
The military movement was looked upon as subsidiary to the 
political mission at Cabul, instead of the latter being, as it 
really was, a pioneering feeler of the former. This indiffe¬ 
rence to Kaufmann’s march was increased by the English 
disasters in Afghanistan and Lomakin’s failure to conquer 
the Turcomans. It was asserted that while the Afghan and 
Turcoman barriers existed India was perfectly safe from 
attack. Then stress was laid upon the Hindoo Koosli, and 
politicians overlooked the looming advance from the Caspian. 
Even SkobelefFs decisive success at Geok Tepe did not shake 
the belief of the Gladstone Cabinet in the sound and per¬ 
manent character of the barriers beyond, intervening between 
Askabad and India. The Duke of Argyll said that the new 
advance was not to be compared with the older ones, and 
that we had nothing to fear from Skobeleff’s triumph. But 
for the energy displayed by Lord Salisbury, the fall back 
from Candahar would have been followed by the evacuation 
of Quetta. 

It was while things were in this condition that Mr. Joseph 
Cowen, M.P., asked me to proceed to St. Petersburg to 
ascertain the Russian view of the position in Central Asia 
from the lips of the principal generals and statesmen. Of all 
the generals I saw, Soboleff was the only one who would 
agree with the opinion I strongly held at the time, and which 
was well known to them, that a Russian attack could be made 
upon India from the Caspian. General Skobeleff was the 
most incredulous of all. He would not hear of a Russian 
attack. “The Central Asian difficulty is all humbug,” he 
said. “ I do not A think a Russian invasion of India would be 
feasible. I do not understand military men in England 


128 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


writing in the Army and Navy Gazette , which I take in and 
read, of a Russian invasion of India. I should not like to 
he commander of such an expedition. The difficulties would 
he enormous. To subjugate Akhal we had only 5,000 men, 
and needed 20,000 camels. To get that transport we had to 
send to Orenburg, to Khiva, to Bokhara, and to Mangishlak 
for animals. The trouble was enormous. To invade India 
we should need 150,000 troops—60,000 to enter India with 
and 90,000 to guard the communications. If 5,000 men 
needed 20,000 camels, what must 150,000 need ! And where 
could we get the transport ? We should require vast supplies, 
for Afghanistan is a poor country, and could not feed 60,000 
men; and we should have to fight the Afghans as well as 
you. If we bribed one Sirdar, you would bribe another; if 
we offered one rouble, you would offer two; if we offered 
two, you would offer five—you could beat us in this. Ho; 
the Afghans would fight us as readily as they fought you. I 
believe the new frontier is quite permanent, and that we 
shall hear no more about Central Asia for many years to 
come.” 

“ But in regard to the possibility of invading India, General 
Soboleff expressed to me a clear conviction that Russia could 
march an army on India if she chose.” 

“That was diplomacy,” replied Skobeleff. “ Of course it 
is possible—all things are possible to a good general—but I 
should not like to undertake the task, and I do not think 
Russia would. Of course, if you enraged Russia—if, by 
your policy, you excited her—if you made her wild—that is 
the word—we might attempt it, even in spite of all the 
difficulties. For my part, I would only make a demonstra¬ 
tion against India, but I would fight you at Herat.” He 
said this with great animation, but very good-humouredly. 
“ l)o you know, I was very much interested during your war 
whether you would occupy Herat or not. It would have 


SKOBELEFF’S PLAN FOR INVADING INDIA. 129 


been a mistake if you had done so. It would be difficult to 
march an army from the Caspian to Herat to fight you there, 
but we should be tempted to do it in the event of a war.” * 

Whether these were really the sentiments of Skobeleff at 
the moment, or whether he wafe purposely minimising the 
possibility of attacking India, in order that England might 
not bo terrified into preparing against it in time, is a matter 
over which much argument might be expended without 
leading to any satisfactory result. I will not attempt to 
discuss the point. I will simply point out one or two facts, 
which are of more importance at the present moment. 

After Skobeleff had finished his conversation with me he 
repeated it to Captain Masloff, one of his favourite officers. 
Masloff published an account of it in the Novoe Vremya 
which tallied with my own, and he subsequently told me 
that Skobeleff had spoken of my report as perfectly accurate. 
The part I have repeated in this book was triumphantly 
quoted by Madame de Hovikoff (otherwise 0. K.), two years 
ago as demonstrating the madness of the Russian scare in 
this country. But 0. Iv. has never said since that these 
utterances of Skobeleff fell completely flat in Russia. No 
Russian newspaper, and no Russian military writer has ever 
reciprocated those views, or, indeed, ever noticed them at all. 
On the other hand, Skobeleff’s opposite opinions in favour 
of an expedition to India, which began to appear a few 
months after his death and have been seeing the light at 
intervals since, have exercised an enormous influence on the 
Russian military mind. Many of the documents published 
were written anterior to his conversation with me, but while 
the latter is ignored and forgotten, the former are incessantly 
being cited in proof of what Russia can effect against India. 

Several other circumstances have contributed to add to the 


* “The Russian advance towards India,” page 105. 

9 



130 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


effect of Skobeleffs aggressive views. A few months after 
liis death General Soholeff published his “ Anglo-Afghan 
Conflict,” a bulky three-volume work, compiled by the Chief 
of the Asiatic branch of the General Staff before proceeding 
to Bulgaria as Minister of War. This work was a sort of 
official history of our Afghan campaign, based on English 
sources, and was recommended by the General Staff as a 
standard work for military libraries. His recent utterances 
in the Russ have shown that General Soboleff looks at things 
through very peculiar spectacles. He is dominated by the 
bitterest hatred against England, and believes everything 
said or written to her disadvantage. In this history he 
sought to make out, or, it would be better to say, did make 
out, to his own satisfaction, that the Afghan war was too large 
an enterprise for us, that we were defeated by the Afghans 
throughout the campaign instead of being mostly victors, 
and that we were compelled at last to withdraw owing to the 
damage inflicted on our prestige and the fear of a rising in 
India.* 

An English reviewer, noticing Soboleff s work, said it was 
made up of “lies and nonsense.” Upon him, of course, the 
work made no favourable impression, and he was disposed to 
minimise its importance. But, as a matter of fact, the book 
exercised an influence which is displayed pretty clearly to- 
.day. To Russian officers who had not studied the subject, 
or who had only derived their impressions of the war from 
the jaundiced statements in the Russian press, the book 
appeared as worthy of credence as any official work could 
possibly be. It had been compiled by the Chief of the 
Asiatic branch of the General Staff, whose express duty it was 
to watch the war on behalf of the Government and obtain 


* A translation of all that is essential in this work is given in “The 
Russians at Merv and Herat.” London : W. H. Allen & Co. ; 1883. 





SKOBFLEFF’S ELAN FOR INVADING INDIA. 131 


all possible information from England—perhaps India— 
bearing upon it. If such an official did not know what he 
was writing about, who in Russia was more competent than 
he ? Thus SobolefFs book was eagerly read and widely read, 
and strengthened to a remarkable degree the feeling already 
prevailing that we were a very weak military power, and only 
maintained our hold on India by a miracle. 

SkobelefFs opinion that we could be expelled from the 
peninsula by means of a hard blow struck in front, simul¬ 
taneously with a fomented mutiny at the rear of the Indus, 
has excited more and more attention as Russia has approached 
nearer our outposts. The belief in its feasibility that has 
steadily developed in Russia, since his plan of 1876 became 
known in 1883, has received a considerable impulse from the 
disappearance of the physical obstacles already existing. Skobe¬ 
lefFs main argument against the feasibility of an invasion, when 
he discussed the subject with me, was the difficulty of trans¬ 
port, but this is a difficulty that has been daily wearing away 
ever since. When he proceeded to Geok Tepe in 1880 it took 
nearly a month for the troops of the Caucasus army to 
march from Tiflis to the Caspian to join. By the opening 
of the Tiflis-Baku railway, since his death, the journey can 
now be done between sunrise and sunset. When he ferried 
those troops across the Caspian he had to contend with a 
very limited marine. By the development of the Baku 
petroleum industry fifty powerful steamers, 150 to 250feet long, 
have been added during the last few years to the shipping of the 
Caspian, and can now convey the largest conceivable army across 
the sea to Krasnovodsk. The Transcaspian railway, again 
was not finished to Ivizil Arvat until long after he left Geok 
Tepe. It is now being pushed on to Askabad, and Lessar 
has stated that whether there be peace or war, it will be 
continued to Sarakhs—within six marches of the Key of 
India. Finally, Skobeleff imagined, or said he imagined, a 

9—2 


132 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT . 


difficult road to exist between Askabad and Herat. Lessar 
has since discovered that it is one of the easiest in Asia. 

Thus, by Russia’s resolute destruction of the Turcoman 
barrier, and by the rapid disappearance of a series of 
obstacles, things have come to this pass—that a land march 
upon India to-day is an enterprise less difficult to the 
Russian military mind than the march upon Constantinople 
in 1877. 

Such an enterprise might take two forms. Either Russia 
might adopt Skobeleff’s idea of a fomented mutiny, and 
advance with merely sufficient troops to cleave a passage 
through the Afghan barrier, or she might ignore for the 
moment the people of India, and push on with some such 
army of mammoth proportions as she employed in the last 
Russo-Turkish war. 

Let me deal with the former first. 

At the outset I must point out that a wide difference of 
opinion exists between English politicians and Russians as 
to the possibility of a mutiny in India, and that this deserves 
more attention than light-hearted publicists in this country 
are disposed to give it. English politicians generally assume 
that India is safe, or sufficiently safe, from the danger of 
another mutiny. Disturbances, it is admitted, might arise on 
the Russian approach, but the country generally would stand 
by us. I do not say that all politicians share this optimist 
view, but the majority do—or, at any rate, they conceal 
their uneasiness and keep it from the public. 

Now Russian generals, and the entire Russian Press, in¬ 
cline to a totally different opinion. General Skobeleff, General 
Soboleff, General Tcliernayeff, General Kaufmann, General 
Grodekoff, General Annenkoff, General Petrusevitch, and 
others less known, may be cited as eminent representative 
Russian military men who never entertained a doubt on the 
subject. I have discussed the Anglo-Russian conflict with many 


SKOBELEFF’S PLAN FOP INVADING INDIA. 133 


Russian officers—some of them personal friends of mine—but 
have never met one who differed from them in this matter. 
Yet some have made a special study of India. Skobeleff was 
always purchasing English hooks on the country, and I ques¬ 
tion whether there are half-a-dozen Members of Parliament 
who have such a good collection of English and foreign books 
on India as I have pulled about in the library of General 
Annenkoff. 

If we examine more closely the plans of Skobeleff and 
others, we shall see how important this factor of a general 
rising really is. Soboleff put the wants of Russia in a neat, 
compact form the other day when he declared that “ Russia 
does not want India : she wants the Bosphorus.” The Rus¬ 
sian invasion of India is commonly ridiculed by certain 
Radicals on the ground of the hugeness of the enterprise 
They assert that the people would never exchange English 
for Russian masters, and that it would require a larger army 
than ever Russia could spare to occupy and hold the country* 
But such assertions are based not upon facts, but illusions. 
Russia does not propose to occupy and hold India. I have 
never met a Russian who proposed—at any rate, for the pre¬ 
sent—such a difficult enterprise as that. Russia does not aim 
at replacing our administration by her own. Yone of the 
Russian generals ever suggested saddling their country with 
such a burden. What Skobeleff really planned and advo¬ 
cated was, that the 250,000,000 people should be encouraged 
and helped to throw the 100,000 English off their backs, and 
that, during the universal collapse of our supremacy through¬ 
out the world that would ensue (in his opinion), Russia 
should occupy Constantinople. 

uch an enterprise is quite a small affair, compared with 
the undertaking imagined by those Radicals I have referred to. 
To secure its success, supposing India to be ready to rise and 
throw us off, all that is needed is to march to Candahar a 


134 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


force sufficiently strong to overcome] the English force hold¬ 
ing the frontier; after which the Princes and the mutinous 
Sepoys themselves could he left to deal with the small garrisons 
located on the plains and plateaux of India, aided, perhaps, 
by a few Russian officers. When Skobeleff proposed his plan 
in 1876, the Russian outposts were too far from the Indian 
frontier, and the communications connecting them with Rus¬ 
sia proper too extended and ill-developed, to allow of more 
than a small force being sent to attack India. He, therefore 
had to rely upon Afghan help on the one hand, and an Indian 
mutiny on the other. 

It is well to notice that he provided for two kinds of assist¬ 
ance in his plan.* If the Afghan co-operation had been 
slight, he would have stimulated a general rising in India. If, 
on the other hand, he had considered himself sufficiently strong 
with Afghan help, to break through the frontier, he would 
have only “ manipulated the disaffected elements in India to 
Russia’s advantage.” The possibility of a general rising in 
India may be questioned by English politicians; but there is 
not one who can deny that “ disaffected elements ” do exist in 
the country. 

The genuine belief of Russia in the probability of a mutiny 
in India on the approach of a small force against us, is too 
serious a factor in politics to be brusquely treated as an illu¬ 
sion. The more feasible a Russian attack upon our rule in 
India appears to the Russian ^Government, the less disposed 
will it be to treat us with diplomatic deference in Europe, and 
refrain from aggressive acts in Asia. Further, the greater the 
chances seem to it of a successful campaign on the Indian 
frontier than in Europe, the stronger the impulse to break 
through the Afghan frontier at any cost and secure Herat. 


* I may state that his plans are given in full in “The Region of the Eter¬ 
nal Fire.” London : W. II. Allen and Co , 1884. 




SKOBELEFF’S PLAN FOR INVADING INDIA. 135 


What would Russia care for the Ameer’s ill will at seizing 
Herat if she were sure of an Indian mutiny? The more, 
therefore, she relies on an Indian revolt the less she may he 
expected to care for Afghan susceptibilities. 

Russia, in a word, has two cards to play—the Afghans and 
people of India. If she finds she cannot accomplish her 
aims with the one, she will try to effect them with the 
other. 

“England lays a heavy hand on her dependent peoples,” 
wrote General Soboleff in the Russ last January, when he 
was already aware that Russia had seized the approaches to 
Herat. “ She reduces them to a state of slavery, only that 
English trade may profit and Englishmen grow rich. The 
deaths of millions in India from starvation have been caused 
indirectly by English despotism. And then the Press of 
England disseminates far and wide the idea of Russia being 
a country of barbarians. Thousands of natives in India only 
await Russia’s crusade of deliverance ! 

“If Englishmen would only throw aside their misplaced 
pride, and study a little deeper the foundation of Russia’s 
rule in Central Asia, comparing it with their own, they would 
soon see plainly why the name of Russia has such prestige 
in Asia, and why the natives of India hate the dominion 
of England, and set their hopes of freedom upon Russia. 
Russia gives full liberty to native manners, and not only does 
not overburden her subjects with fresh taxes, but even allows 
them exemptions and privileges of a most extensive character. 
England, on the contrary, is a vampire, sucking the last drop 
of blood out of India. 

“ As to our course of antagonism in Asia, England herself 
threw down the glove at Sebastopol, and if the Russian flag 
now floats over Merv, the English have themselves to blame. 
We accepted their challenge, it now rests with them whether 
there is to be a Russian invasion of India or not. But we hope 


136 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


the time lias come when English strategists will take into con¬ 
sideration the 200,000 troops of the Caucasus, and the 100,000 
in reserve of Turkestan and Western Siberia, besides another 
army of half a million behind in European Russia, and will look 
on the map and see what must happen if a Russian corps of 
200,000 men, accompanied by another of 100,000 of splendid 
irregular cavalry, pass through Herat and Balali into India, 
and proclaim the independence of the native population. Let 
England think well of the consequence of Russia deciding to 
take up arms against her.” 

By ignorant or interested writers these threats were repre¬ 
sented as merely the casual frantic outpourings of a head¬ 
strong and harmless general. But it is well there should be 
no misconception on this score. Soboleff is an officer of very 
considerable weight and standing in Russia, and what he 
said represents fairly the feeling of the whole army and the 
greater part of the press at the present moment. 

All the more reason, therefore, why we should cling to 
our hold upon Herat, and insist on a settlement of the 
frontier dispute before Russia masses a force at its gates 
capable of crushing Lumsden and his Afghan allies. 

Let us now consider the second form an attack upon India 
might take — i.e., a blow delivered by a large army instead of 
by a relatively small force, and operating without reliance 
upon a simultaneous rising on the part of the Indian people. 

It is no secret that the Government are perfectly aware 
that Russia could dispatch a very strong expedition to the 
gates of Herat, and that the calculations as to what she could 
really do have been scientifically worked out by the ablest 
English military authorities, in a manner very alarming to 
those who hold the reins of power in this country. Soboleff’s 
sneering suggestion that English strategists should take into 
consideration what Russia could accomplish from her Caspian 
base, in the event of war, has already been anticipated by our 


skobelepe\ s plan Bor invading India. isr 


generals. They demonstrated, before even Merv was annexed 
and the gates of Herat were won, that Russia could in 77 
days mass 23,000 troopsat Herat, and in six weeks afterwards at 
least as many more, while in from 70 to 100 days she could 
put 13,000 men into Cabul, and in 90 days push 11,000 more 
into the northern passes of India. Without counting the 
latter, we may therefore say that before even the last two 
advances took place in Central Asia, from Askabad to Merv 
and from Merv to the Paropamisus approaches, our military 
authorities knew that in less than four months Russia could 
mass nearly 50,000 men— all Russian troops—on the camp¬ 
ing-ground of the Key of India. 

A year ago, before these calculations became bruited abroad, 
I drew attention, in a pamphlet, * to the facility with which 
Russia, vice the Volga and the Caspian base, could thrust a 
large army along the Askabad-Herat route to confront us at 
Candahar, in the event of European complications. Fresh 
evidence has accumulated since of the aggressive strength of 
this line of operations, and it may be that events will practi¬ 
cally test it before long. 

The Russian army, on a peace footing, numbers between 
800,000 and 900,000 men. In time of war two or three 
millions may be summoned under the flag. Every year 
nearly 300,000 recruits are drafted into the army. 

Moscow and the contiguous provinces are generally re¬ 
garded as constituting the heart of Russia. If one will take 
a map, he will sec that the distance is no further from this 
centre of strength to Krasnovodsk, on the Caspian, than to 
Constantinople. In 1877-8 Russia despatched nearly half a 
million men, with an enormous quantity of stores, in the 
direction of the latter place. To-day it would be as easy, or 
rather, easier, to deflect that number upon the Caspian. 

* “Russia’s power of seizing Herat and concentrating a force to threaten 
India.” London: W. H. Allen and Co., 1884. 




138 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


Most of the troops sent to the Balkan peninsula, in 1877, 
proceeded by rail, and it is well known that half of Russia’s 
difficulties arose from the restricted character of this means 
of communication. But the Volga and its tributaries drain 
the heart of Russia I have referred to, and constitute a mag¬ 
nificent waterway to the Caspian Sea. 

"Although frequently described by travellers, the grandeur 
of this Volga waterway has never been properly appreciated 
by English politicians. Within a few short hours' railway 
ride from St. Petersburg, the Volga can be touched at a 
navigable point, and from there troops can go in steamers or 
barges down the Caspian Sea. From the Caspian Sea runs 
the easy level road from Michaelovsk (near Krasnovodsk) via 
Askabad and Saraklis, to the gates of Herat and to India. 

The resources of the Volga may be gathered from the fact 
that the traffic on the river amounts to over ten million tons 
annually, conducted by 650 cargo steamers and 3,000 barges, 
having the united capacity of nearly 3,000,000 tons. The value 
of these steamers and barges is estimated at £8,000,000 
sterling. In excess of the 3,000 permanent barges of 1,000 
tons capacity each, there are hundreds of temporary ones 
constructed to convey cargoes to Nijni Novgorod, or other 
destinations, and then broken up. On the Volga and Kama 
100 such barges are yearly constructed, with a cargo capacity 
each of from 300 to 500 tons, and 200 with a capacity of 
from 5,000 to 8,000 tons. These huge vessels, the size of 
ocean-going steamers, and the 300-foot permanent barges, are 
too large to pass through the canal system to the River Neva, 
the locks of which do not admit the passage of craft exceed¬ 
ing in length 147 feet; hence 1,000 smaller barges, 100 feet 
long, and having a capacity of 200 or 300 tons apiece, are 
yearly constructed simply for the transport of goods from the 
Volga to the Neva. Besides the extensive shipbuilding 
above referred to, 4,000 barges, wherries, and fishing boats 



General Sir F. S. 


Roberts, V.C., K.C.B 






























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SKOBELEFF’S PLAN FOR INVADING INDIA. 141 


are annually built on the Volga for the lower course of the 
river anil the Caspian. The central point of the traffic on 
the Volga is Nijni Novgorod, where there is an annual turn¬ 
over at the Great Fair of from twenty to twenty-five mil¬ 
lions sterling. Astrakhan, at the mouth, does a trade of 
£5,000,000 a year. The traffic passing through the mouth 
of the Volga amounted to a million tons in 1882. 

These are some of the transport resources of the River 
Volga, down which Russia is dispatching troops to reinforce 
Komaroff s army at the gates of Herat. Besides the navigable 
waterway from Tver, the railway system touches the river at 
four great points—Nijni Novgorod, Samara, Saratoff, and 
Tsaritzin. To each of these, troops could be dispatched from 
Middle and Western Russia, and, on their arrival at the 
river, find plenty of transport to carry them down to the sea. 

That sea—the Caspian—associated in most Englishmen’s 
minds with sand and scorpions, is now a great basin of busy 
commerce. Over 200,000,000 herrings are caught in it every 
year. The petroleum trade of Baku, opposite Michaelovsk, 
employs fifty large steamers and hundreds of sailing vessels. 
Seven thousand vessels enter and leave the port every year. 
The port of Baku contains pier accommodation for 100 
steamers at one and the same time, while the petroleum 
refineries give the means of drawing largely upon engineering 
resources. Without experiencing anything like the difficulty 
she encountered in 1877, Russia could assemble in the magnifi¬ 
cent harbour of Baku an army quite as large as she invaded 
Turkey with then. It would have better transport, the troops 
would arrive at the base in better trim, and they would have 
the enormous food supply of the Volga to sustain them in 
their campaign. 

The Army of the Caucasus, 100,000 strong on a peace 
footing, is for the most part concentrated in Transcaucasia. 
Through Transcaucasia runs a railway from Batourn, on the 
Black Sea, to this same Baku on the Caspian. Baku, there- 


142 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


fore, would serve as the concentrating point of the forces 
of the Caucasus as well as those from Russia proper. 

Baku, which in 1879 only contained 15,000 people, now 
has a population of 50,000, and is becoming a great city, 
There are 5,000 houses in the place and 1,500 shops, and 
200 oil refineries turning out a cpiarter of a million tons of 
burning oil every year. 

Across the water to Michaelovsk is a day’s journey; then 
comes the railway trip to Ivizil Arvat terminus, 144 miles in¬ 
land, where the Transcaspian desert ends, and the fertile 
country commences, running all the way to Herat. As I have 
said, the transport power of the Caspian is now such that 
Russia could rapidly move, not simply thousands of troops, 
but tens of thousands; for the fifty steamers are new and 
large, and the hundreds of sailing vessels ships of great 
capacity. 

AVe may therefore say, that so far as the collection of 
troops and stores in the Caspian is concerned, Russia could 
surpass any efforts we could make on the Quetta side 
of India. Bub there is another great fact. This assembly 
could go on secretly, and almost without our knowledge—at 
least, definite information could be suppressed,—while we 
could not move a soldier from England without the circum¬ 
stance being known to Russia. Further, while not a soldier 
could get to India without the liability of being attacked on 
the way, for Russia might be able to secure allies in Europe, 
she herself could assemble a vast army in the Caspian, 
behind the screen of the Caucasus, without having to detach 
a single man to protect it. 

In 1877 Kishineffwas the concentrating point from which 
Russia invaded Turkey. For her troops to proceed to that 
point, the difficulties of transport and food supply were in¬ 
finitely greater than they would be from the present terminal 
point of the Transcaspian railway system at Ivizil Arvat. I 
say present terminal point, because although her engineers have 


SKOBELEFFS PLAN FOR INVADING INDIA . 143 


been engaged extending the line since last autumn, nothing is 
known as to the amount of new railway now open for traffic. 
Now, from Kishineff to Constantinople, the troops of the 
Sliipka column had to march 750 miles, and of the Sophia 
column, 970 miles. If we treat Kizil Arvat as a Kishineff, 
the distance thence to Herat is only 523 miles, as compared 
with the distances traversed by the Russians in 1877, given 
above. But perhaps an objection may be raised to treating 
Kizil Arvat as a Kishineff—then start from the decks of the 
transports in the Caspian. The distance even then is only 
G67 miles, as compared with the 1,000 miles many Russians 
trudged on foot before they got to Constantinople. 

And mark this difference. Russia, in invading Turkey, 
had Austria to threaten her flank. There would be no such 
enemy in the Caspian. Russia, further, had to cross the 
Danube—one of the largest rivers in Europe—in face of the 
Turks. She had to encounter large armies at Plevna, and 
traverse the almost impregnable Balkan range, meeting, on the 
other side, armies again before she got to Constantinople. In 
the case of Herat, nothing of the kind exists. There is not a 
single river of any magnitude the whole distance from the 
Caspian to Herat. There is no mountain range—only the 
Paropamisus Downs, containing, according to Gospodin Les- 
sar, at least twenty good crossings. And instead of great 
armies, the Russians would find no enemy at all the whole way 
to their present outposts, and could now utilize the 50,000 
Turcoman irregular horse to assist them in their undertaking. 

Thus the defence of Herat, in the face of such odds, is a 
very serious matter. It is no permanent advantage to us 
that the forces at present in the Transcaspian region should 
be relatively small, compared with the larger invading army 
I have referred to. Said a Russian general to me, during a 
conversation at Moscow during the Coronation festivities, 
“We have now such a good road to the heart of Afghanistan, 
and the communications with the Caspian base, and from the 


144 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


Caspian base to Askabad, are so perfect, and admit of such a 
ready movement of troops, that we need only a handful of 
men to garrison the Turcoman region. It is cheaper to main¬ 
tain 50,000 men in the Tiflis district than at Geok Tepe and 
Askabad; and we can throw them from the one point to the 
other at a moment’s notice.” 

Had Skobeleff been alive to-day, his plan for the invasion 
of India would have undoubtedly been the massing, on a 
large scale, of troops in the Caspian basin, and their dispatch 
to Herat via the Askabad-Sarakhs road and the parallel one 
from Astrabad via Meshed. The second is the old highway 
of invasion, and runs through the richest districts of Ivho- 
rassan. On reaching the Hari Rud at Kusan, the Astrabad 
column would march to the south of Herat, leaving on its left 
flank the Paropamisus hills, and sever the Afghan fortress 
from India. 

It must not be forgotten that the Russians at Pul-i- 
Kliatun and Zulfikar have only to make three marches to the 
west, and the occupation of Meshed would provide them 
at a stroke with resources in transport, food, and supplies 
generally, equal to those at Herat. Such an occupation 
might be made by arrangement with the Shah, who is 
notoriously anti-English, or without it; for if war arose, 
Russia would not hesitate a moment to cut off Kliorassan 
from Persia at Shahrood, and use the Golden province as a 
line of advance and base of operations. 

Hence the invasion of India, or the smaller operation of 
an attack on Herat, is an enterprise which seems perfectly 
feasible to Russian military men, and it is the conviction 
that the conflict would end in their favour that renders the 
Russian seizure of the gates of Herat so ominous. If Russia 
had not felt that she could safely affront this country, she 
would have never moved a Cossack across the Sarakhs- 
Khoja-Saleh boundary to the northern pasture lands of the 
Key of India. 


I 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE RUSSIAN RAILWAY TO HERAT AND INDIA. 


The advance of the Russian locomotive—Immense changes it will occasion 
in Central Asia—Inevitable junction of the Indian and European rail¬ 
way systems via Candahar and Herat—Only £1,000,000 needed to com¬ 
plete the link—Charing Cross to India in nine days—Statistics of the line. 



VERY great factor in the Russo-Indian question is the 


Transcaspian railway, which is sanctioned for con¬ 
struction as far as Askabad, and, according to Russian reports, 
is to be afterwards continued to Saraklis. If we allow the 
Russians to maintain their hold on the gates of Herat, and 
ourselves subsequently retire from safeguarding the fortress 
with English officers and troops, it 'will be always possible, 
after the place has been carried by a coup cle main, for Russia 
to connect it with her railway system in a few months. The 
menace to India would then be perfect. 

To a correspondent of the Cologne Gazette Lessar is reported 
to have said as follows, the second week in March :—“ People 
attribute to us the idea of continuing the Transcaspian 
railway from Askabad to Saraklis and Herat—a two-fold 
absurdity. I have studied those regions in all directions and 
am convinced that a line to Herat by Merv must follow the 
course of the Murghab, for a desert railway must, if possible, 
keep close to water. From a technical standpoint the railway 
from Merv to Herat would bo easy, for there is a gentle rise, 
and the chain of mountains, or rather hills, called the Paropa- 
misus, has at least 20 good passes, and its loftiest peak is not 
1,000 metres high. During the Russo-Turkish war I took 
part in laying down the much more difficult line from Bender 
to Galatz, and I believe the line from Merv to Herat would 


145 


10 


146 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


scarcely take more than three weeks. I should, however, he 
the last to recommend such a line. What we require in 
Central Asia is a line going from Askabad to Merv, and 
thence north-eastwards to Bokhara, so as to connect the 
markets together, facilitate the exchange of products, and 
open up new outlets for our Russian industry. When once 
we were at Herat with our line, the connexion with the 
Indian lines at Quetta would only be a question of time, and 
then farewell to our dreams of our Central Asian culture and 
industry. Manchester and Birmingham would soon find their 
way by Quetta and Herat to Merv, glutting the Bokharan 
markets with their cheap goods, and we should see that we 
had merely laboured for the English. The line to Herat, 
held up as a bugbear in the English newspapers, is only an 
imaginary evil for the English, but a real one for us Russians, 
for so far from implying the entrance of the Russians into 
India, it would rather imply the entrance of English goods 
into the Central Asian markets, and no military advantages 
could guard us against this economic danger.” 

In interviewing, unless the interviewer knows a little of 
the subject he is discussing, he is always sure to involve his 
“subject” in mistakes. Hence it would be unfair, in the 
present instance, to charge some of the above absurdities to 
Lessar himself. The interviewer implies that Lessar said 
that Russia had no idea of running the line to Sarakhs (as 
well as to Herat), and also puts the matter as though Lessar 
stated that the railway ought to run from Merv to Herat, not 
■via Sarakhs. This, of course, is nonsense. What Lessar 
meant was that Russia, in pushing the line to Sarakhs and 
Merv, had no idea of extending it to Herat and India; and 
he was only saying what was commonplace when he told the 
interviewer that from Merv to Herat a line must follow the 
Murgliab. Of course he would object to such a line, because 
it is not on the route to India: the railway ought to turn oft* 


THE RUSSIAN RAILWAY TO HERAT , ETC. 147 


at Sarakhs to do that. As for its being possible to make a 
railway from Merv to Herat in three weeks, that was a state¬ 
ment Lessar could obviously never have made, for the con¬ 
struction of 240 miles of railway is not to be done by any 
human power at present existing at the rate of eleven or 
twelve miles a day. 

I take notice of this interview at all, simply to point out 
one or two important facts which are not yet properly appre¬ 
ciated by the British public. In the first place, it is an es¬ 
tablished fact that cannot be in any way contested, that it is 
possible to construct a railway from Askabad to Herat, and 
thence to India. Secondly, it is equally beyond dispute that 
the two railway systems of Russia and India are pushing to¬ 
wards each other in such a manner, that unless one of them 
suspends the advance, they will be infallibly within a few 
short hundred miles of each other in a year or two’s time. 
Further, that when this conies about, all that will be needed 
will be the construction of this short section to unite India 
with Europe by railway, and provide the world with a rival 
route to that via the Suez Canal. Finally, that as this new 
route will give Europe the means of getting to India in nine 
days or so, and India the means of returning the compliment, 
the traffic passing along the line through Afghanistan to India 
and back again will set up an amount of local progress and 
movement, altogether changing the conditions on the Afghan 
frontier. 

Russia, who is the creator of this new route, and who is doing 
her best to enforce its opening up, is now posing as its oppo¬ 
nent, so as to lull England until she seizes Herat. And she 
selects as the mouthpiece of this opposition the very man 
who has done more than anyone living to bring about the 
inevitable junction of the Indian and Russian railways ! 

Before describing the line, let me define what she is doing 
and what she is going to do. She is going to build the rail= 

10—2 


148 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


way as far as Sarakhs, for that is an admitted fact in Russia, 
and Lessar himself told me as much a few days after his 
arrival in London. From Sarakhs, however, she does not 
mean to push on to Herat or its gates, not because it is im¬ 
possible or difficult, but because England would regard it as a 
menace. To allay our uneasiness on this score she says that 
she is going to turn off from Sarakhs to Merv, and after- 
wards extend the line to Turkestan. Therefore, she asks 
that we shall not be disturbed by any bugbear of a railway to 
Herat, but allow her to retain the gates of that place without 
fear of the locomotive pushing up thither. 

It is well we should clearly appreciate the reasons of this 
attitude. She does not want us rendered more determined to 
dispossess her of the gates of Herat by the fears excited by 
the advance of her locomotive, and she does not desire that we 
ourselves should rush on our Quetta line to Candaliar and the 
Key of India. In her view that would be a calamity. It would 
strengthen our defence of Herat too much. But it would not 
do for her to say this; therefore a commercial objection is 
trotted out, and she expresses a fear that if the two railway 
systems were joined England would deluge the markets of 
Central Asia with her cheap produce. 

To my view, there is something delightfully audacious in 
this last contention. It is a well-known fact that every Russian 
advance means the exclusion of English goods from more 
markets in Central Asia, and that this is accomplished, not by 
the establishment of superior transport, but by the short and 
summary method of ordering our manufactures out of the 
country altogether. At present no English manufactured 
goods whatever are allowed to cross the Russian frontier in 
Central Asia from India; and the produce of India, such as 
tea, indigo, &c., is subjected to the heaviest duties. The fear 
expressed by Lessar, therefore, is grotesquely absurd. All that 
Russia would require to do, on the junction of the Russo- 


THE RUSSIAN RAILWAY TO HERAT\ ETC . 149 


Indian lines, would be to frame an edict and place a custom¬ 
house officer at the connecting point, and English commerce 
with the markets of Turkestan and Turkmenia would be 
effectually gripped and held in tether. Nobody knows this 
better than Russia herself. 

On this account, we must not be lured into surrendering the 
gates of Herat, because Russia is only going to extend the 
Transcaspian railway to Sarakhs and Merv for the moment. 
As those two points form the bases of her present posi¬ 
tion, that simple extension alone would be a most serious 
matter; because Russia would have her railway system run¬ 
ning to within 202 and 240 miles of Herat, while ours at 
Pishin would be 469 miles distant. It does not need much 
knowledge of military affairs to appreciate how great an ad¬ 
vantage the Russian generals would possess over our own, if 
no corresponding movement were made by this country. 

In this manner, the Russian railway advance provokes and 
compels the advance of the English locomotive into Afghan - 
istan. This is a serious annoyance to Russia, for she wants 
to get as close to India as she can, and secure as much 
of the future highway as possible. She would like the 
junction to take place not further from India than, say, 
Candahar. She does not want England to push on the line 
to Herat, and thereby prevent her securing the Key of India. 
Hence the utmost efforts are being made to allay our fears, 
and prevent us, when the railway is finished to Pishin, from 
advancing for the moment any further. 

“Don’t talk about the Transcaspian railway,” said Skobe. 
leff to me in 1882. “That’s a fad of Annenkoff’s. Nothing 
will ever come of it.” 

Yet it has been since revealed in Grodekoff’s history of 
the Turcoman war, that Skobeleff did attach an enormous 
value to the line, and took the deepest interest in its con¬ 
struction. He realised at the very outset how vastly it would 


150 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


improve the Russian position at the gates of the Ivey of 
India. 

The notion of a Transcaspian railway did not crop up until 
after Lomakin’s defeat at Geok Tepe in 1879. But for that 
defeat, it is a question whether it would have been con¬ 
structed at all. The disaster at Geok Tepe shook the power 
of Russia in Central Asia, and rendered a campaign of revenge 
unavoidable. The principal difficulty in the second expedi¬ 
tion consisted in the scarcity East of the Caspian of trans¬ 
port animals, to convey the stores of the army across the 
narrow band of desert lying between the Caspian and Ivizil 
Arvat. To overcome this, a service of traction engines and 
fourgons was projected by General Petrusevitch, and, later 
on, the construction of a tramway. Ultimately, at the sug¬ 
gestion of General Annenkoff, the Controller of Russian mili¬ 
tary transport, Skobeleff decided on a regular railway, and 
induced the Government to send him the 100 miles of railway 
lying idle in store at Bender. 

At first the railway works were meant to be only tempo¬ 
rary, but Annenkoff conceiving the idea of some day earning 
for himself the reputation of a second Lesseps, by pushing 
on the line to India and giving the world a new route to the 
East, made the line so strong, that, when at last it was 
finished to Kizil Arvat, 144 miles from the Caspian, the five- 
foot metal way was as good as any in Russia. 

On Annenkoff’s return from the seat of war, he issued a 
pamphlet in support of his idea. This was exposed to a deal 
of ridicule in Russia, as well as in England; and not only 
did the Marquis of Hartington pooh-pooh the idea in the 
House of Commons, but even Sir Henry Rawlinson, Sir 
Richard Temple, and other so-called “ alarmists ” put it aside 
with disdain, as not entering the sphere of practical politics. 

On myself, however, the pamphlet made a very different 
impression. So subversive of the condition of things in 


THE RUSSIAN RAILWAY TO HERAT , ETC. 151 

Central Asia did it promise to be, in my estimation, that I 
published a pamphlet on the subject, with a facsimile of 
Annenkoff’s map, and issued 1,000 copies to Parliament and 
the Press. In this pamphlet I demonstrated, by calculations 
based on Lessar’s discoveries, that the extension of the line 
from Ivizil Arvat to Herat would only cost Russia 
<£2,192,000, while the complete junction of the Russian and 
Indian railway systems could be effected for a little over 
£0,000,000 sterling. # 

Even this failed to move the lethargy of the Government, 
beyond causing the improvement of the Bolan route to be 
taken in hand, which, I have been informed, was due to this 
pamphlet; but in Russia it had the fact of dissipating much 
of the ridicule to which Annenkoff had been exposed by the 
Press, with which he was not popular, and when in 1883 the 
Transcaucasian railway was finished from Batoum on the 
Black Sea to Baku on the Caspian, it was at once seen how 
natural a continuation of this trade route Annenkoff’s line 
was across the Caspian. 

Still, nothing was done by England as a counterpoise until 
Merv was annexed. Then the government which had stopped 
the Candahar railway, and literally pitched a part of the line 
all over the country, gave orders for the same railway to be 
rushed on with all possible speed, and to be carried to the 
Pishin plateau beyond Quetta. 

As soon as this order was given, Russia retorted by sanc¬ 
tioning the extension of her own line from Kizil Arvat to 
Askabad. 

In this manner, even if the advance had not subsequently 
taken place to the gates of Herat, two further sections of the 
Russo-Indian railway would have been constructed all the 
same. Whether England will retort on the extension to 

* “The Russian Railway to Herat and India.” London, W. H. Allen 
and Co., 1882. 



152 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


Askabad by a fresh advance on Candahar remains to be seen. 
The generality of English politicians assert that it will be 
absolutely essential if the Russian line be carried on to 
Sarakhs. 

At the outset, let us see how the Russo-Indian line will 
stand if no further advances be made beyond those actually 
sanctioned—that is to say, as far as Askabad on the Russian 
side, and Pisliin on the English. 


Askabad to Sarakhs 
Sarakhs to Herat 

Askabad to Herat 


Miles. Cost per mile. 

1854 ... £4,000 
f 102-1 ... 4,0001 
{100 ... 5,000j 


388 miles 


Total. 

... £742,000 
... 910,000 

£1,652,000 


The cost of the line is based upon the calculations of An- 
nenkoff and Lessar. Between Askabad and Sarakhs, accord¬ 
ing to Lessar, the country is quite flat, and without a single 
obstacle to a railway. As regards the country from Sarakhs 
to Herat, Lessar, after his survey in 1882, divided it into 
two sections. A half, he said, would be as level as the 
Askabad-Sarakhs district, and the remaining half identical 
with the country commonly met with in Russia—that is to 
say, easy to traverse, but less easy than the rest, because of 
some hills and undulations. I have increased the cost of this 
by £1,000 a mile. I should say that no one has more insisted 
upon the feasibility of the line to Herat than Lessar himself, 
and it is he himself who has selected the Askabad-Sarakhs 
route as the best from the Caspian. 

Thus, for less than the price of a couple of ironclads Russia 
could carry her railway system right into the very Ivey of 
India. Considering that she has just spent £9,000,000 in 
completing her railway communication between the Caspian 
and the Black Sea, this is a very insignificant outlay. 

On the Indian side, when the Candahar railway was re- 








THE RUSSIAN RAILWAY TO HERAT , ETC. 153 


commenced tlie terminal point was Sibi, 599 miles from 
Herat. The sanctioned extension to Pisliin will carry the 
line to within 100 miles of Candaliar, or 469 miles of the 
Key of India. Thus, if we go no further, Russia will be 81 
miles nearer Herat with her locomotive than ourselves. 

At £5,000 a mile, the estimated cost of the Candaliar 
railway, the outlay on our section to Herat, 469 miles, would 
be £2,345,000, the country being more difficult between 
Candahar and Herat than between Askabad and Sarakhs. In 
this manner, when the sanctioned extensions are finished, all 
the expenditure that will be needed to establish through 
communication between Europe and India by railway will 
lie less than £4,000,000 sterling. 

Miles. Cost of Section. 

Askabad to Herat. 388 ... £1,652,000 

Pisliin to Herat . 469 ... 2,345,000 

Total length and cost ... 857 ... £3,997,000 


Considering the revolution that would be accomplished by 
the possibility of proceeding from Charing Cross to India in 
nine days, this outlay is, relatively, an absurd trifle. If no 
political considerations hindered its accomplishment, a com¬ 
pany might be formed and the money raised in London for 
the railway in a few hours. 

At the present moment Russia is going to spend, in ex¬ 
tending the Vladikavkaz railway to the Caspian and Black 
Sea, a sum of money nearly equal to that which I have given 
above as all that is needed to render it possible for English 
people to proceed to India in nine days. When this Vladi¬ 
kavkaz line is finished, it will still further improve the 
proposed line of communications. At present the route would 
be Calais, Berlin, Odessa, Batoum, Baku, Michaelovsk, Aska¬ 
bad, Herat, Candahar, and Pisliin; the water breaks being— 
from Dover to Calais, Odessa to Batoum, and Baku to 







154 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


Michaelovsk. When, however, the Vladikavkaz line is com- 

_ « 

pleted, the water breaks will be only two. The traveller will 
proceed direct from Calais to Petrovsk, on the Caspian, and 
cross over thence to Michaelovsk, thus saving the journey 
across the Black Sea. This Vladikavkaz-Petrovsk link will 
be completed next year, so that by the time the Afghan rail¬ 
way is open, the lino of steam communication from London 
to Calcutta, via Herat, will be perfect throughout. 

I have said that in Russia it is stated on the best authority 
that a decision has already been arrived at to push on the 
Transcaspian Railway, when finished to Askabad, still 
further, to Sarakhs. This has been practically confirmed by 
Lessar. Whether it will turn off then to Merv or not, we 
need not discuss. I do not believe it will. I am persuaded 
Russia will make a dash then for Herat. But let us simply 
accept Russia’s admission that the line will cease advancing 
towards India when it attains Sarakhs. Even if she goes 
no further, one thing is already certain—England will in¬ 
evitably push on her Pishin line to Candahar. 

You may possibly think that events are not likely to be 
ripe for some time to come for a return to Candahar; but 
every hour they are tending to an English occupation of 
Herat, and, whether the communications be maintained 
through Candahar or not, the connection between Herat and 
Pishin will inevitably take the form of a railway. If Russia 
pushes on her locomotive to Sarakhs, to within 202 miles of 
Herat, it will not do for our locomotive to be 469 miles short 
of it. Public opinion will compel the Government to push 
on the Indian railway system to Candahar. 


In that case, the position will be this:— 

Miles. 

Total cost. 

Sarakhs to Herat . 

202| ... 

£910,000 

Candahar to Herat . 

369 ... 

1,845,000 

Total length and cost 

57H ... 

£2,755,000 








THE RUSSIAN RAILWAY TO HERAT , ETC. 155 


Tims, whether Russia turns off afterwards to Merv or not, 
the extension of her railway system to Sarakhs will have the 
effect of reducing the gap between the railways of Europe 
and India to less than 600 miles. Rut I do not believe that 
the public would be satisfied with this state of affairs. Rela¬ 
tively the Russian locomotive would be far too close to Herat, 
and consequently our Candahar line would be pushed on 
absolutely to Herat. This done, the gap would be reduced 
to a paltry 200 miles, and there can be hardly a doubt that 
the moment a period of peace ensued the pressure of com¬ 
merce would quickly bring about a junction. 

Hence, I hold that in a very few years’ time India and 
Europe will be joined together by a quick route of railway 
running through Herat, and the traffic speeding along it, 
even if it be only passenger, will revolutionize the Russo- 
Indian region, and efface the southern portion of the Afghan 
barrier. 

If it be urged that I am too sanguine, I reply that the 
changes I prognosticate are nothing compared with what has 
been accomplished since 1880. Take Merv. It was then as 
mysterious as Timbuctoo, and common report affirmed that it 
was instant death for any European to penetrate to the haunt 
of the man-stealing Turcomans. To-day, the postman goes his 
rounds in the oasis, the policeman guards the shops in the 
bazaar, and a site is already staked off for a permanent tele¬ 
graph office. Take Herat. Less than eighteen months ago 
no Englishman thought of the Sepoy and Cossack confront¬ 
ing each other on the Paropamisus slopes. Herat was as 
much out of the world, so far as European intercourse was 
concerned, as the Arctic region. To-day some of its gates 
are in the Postal L T nion, and a post-card can be sent by 
Lessar from London to Alikhanoff at Pul-i-khisti for a penny. 

Strange as it may seem, the opening up of this short cut to 
India, on the importance of which I have been insisting for 


156 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


years, without having produced much effect on the British 
public, is nothing more than a revival of a scheme that excited 
a mania in England 150 years ago. The Russians are only 
trying to do to-day what the English sought to accomplish 
in the reign of George II. 

One hundred and fifty years ago the merchants of England 
were bitten with the idea of establishing trade relations with 
India via Russia and the Caspian Sea. The goods were to 
be conveyed to St. Petersburg or some other Baltic port; 
they were then to be sent by canal or road to the upper 
course of the Volga, and they were afterwards to float down 
the river 2000 miles in barges to its mouth. Here they 
were to bo placed on ships and taken to Astrabad Bay, and 
from this point dispatched by caravan through Persia and 
Afghanistan to India. 

If the conditions of trade and travel in Russia at the time 
could be adequately realised, people would be amazed at the 
wonderful enterprise of these merchants. In the Baltic there 
was constant war, the Volga swarmed with pirates, the 
Caspian was a Persian lake with rapine and disorder seething 
round, its shores, and the whole of the country thence to 
India was as turbulent and untamed as the worst parts of 
Afghanistan to-day. Finally, in India itself, France was 
still the stronger power, and Clive had not commenced the 
career of conquest destined to convert the country into the 
magnificent dependency of the Empire we find it to-day. 
Such were a few of the conditions at the time the Russia 
Company sought to open up the Transcaspian route to India. 
In the interval that has elapsed the English, who only held a 
few points on the east coast of India (excluding the then in¬ 
significant port, without territory, of Bombay), have moved 
towards Europe from Calcutta to Quetta 2000 miles. The 
whole of this country they have conquered and organized, 
and railway communication runs right through it, or will do 


THE RUSSIAN RAILWAY TO HERAT\ ETC. 157 

so when the Pishin railway is finished. The Russians, on 
their part, whose final stronghold was Astrakhan, have ad¬ 
vanced towards ’India as far as Ak Robat and other gates of 
Herat, or 1200 miles, the entire length of which is open to 
trade, and the greater portion traversed by steam communica¬ 
tion. 

In this manner, instead of the Russians at Astrakhan and 
the English at Calcutta being over 3,700 miles apart from 
one another, and exercising no control over the intervening 
country, as was the case when Jonas Hanway tried to push 
English goods to India 150 years ago, they are now, measur¬ 
ing from the Russian position at Ak Robat to the English at 
Pishin, only a little over 500 miles apart, while some of their 
soldiers face each other. Yet, forgetful of the past, and blind 
to the forces at work at the present, English statesmen for 
years have been acting as though the trumpery Afghan 
barrier were destined to last for centuries. 


I 


CHAPTER VIII. 


THE FUTURE OF THE AFGHAN BARRIER. 

Impossibility of maintaining the Afghan barrier as it is—The Sepoy must 
confront the Cossack—The expansion of Russia—Will Russia let us 
garrison Herat ?—Skobeleffs Afghan programme—England must her¬ 
self organize the Afghan frontier, and man it with troops. 

T HE Tsar rules 100 million subjects; the Queen controls 
in India 250 millions. Between the two Empires 
lies the Afghan barrier. 

What is the Afghan barrier 1 To the majority of English¬ 
men it is a vast mountainous region, extremely inaccessible, 
and peopled throughout with fierce tribes averse to any inter¬ 
course with the Eeringlii. To conquer it would be a task 
equal to the Russian conquest of the Caucasus. To attempt 
commercial intercourse would be to expose England to the 
risk of having to perpetually avenge brutal murders. Eor 
Russia to try to march an army into any part of the Ameer’s 
dominions would be to involve her in those disasters and 
losses which marked our last Afghan War. If given to strife 
among themselves, the people are welded together by a common 
feeling of patriotism against the attacks of outsiders. Irre- 
claimably cruel, they are best left alone ; and even if Russia 
tore her way through the tribesmen, and broke the Ameer’s 
levies, England could confront the wearied and mauled in¬ 
vaders in the Khyber and Bolan Passes, and effectually check 
an inrush into India. 

Thus, to the view of most Englishmen, Afghanistan is a 
material as well as a moral barrier. To my view it is neither. 

There is only one possible solution of the Central Asian 
Question. If the Russian advance is to be permanently 
arrested, we must confront the Cossack with the Sikh. Unless 

158 


THE FUTURE OF THE AFGHAN BARRIER \159 

we move up to Russia, Russia will move down upon India., 
There can be no permanent zone maintained between the 
two empires. 

AVe shall see what a breakable barrier this Afghanistan is, 
if we look at a few plain facts plainly. All I ask, at the out¬ 
set, is that you look at them with your own eyes, and not 
through the spectacles of 1842 or 1878; nor yet, again, through 
the lenses of political old fogeys, or, worse still, of mere party 
hacks, who, because they or their leaders expressed such and 
such opinions—five, ten, or twenty years ago—would rather see 
the Empire perish than change them. 

The Russians are posted at the gates of Herat; the English 
are posted on the hills dominating the avenues to Candahar. 
Between them lies the Afghan barrier. 

That barrier, physically, is of such a character, that the 
Russians could drive a four-in-hand from their own Cossack 
outposts to ours, and, during the 549 miles’ ride, they would 
pass only two towns on the road—Herat with 50,000, and 
Candahar with 60,000 people. There are bad roads in 
Afghanistan, but they do not lie between the Russians and 
the English. There are fierce tribes, but they lie the thinnest 
between the Tsar’s soldiers and the Queen’s. There are patriotic 
Afghans, but the least sentimental, and the most amenable to 
European influence, lie between the Cossack and the Sikh. 
There are fearful mountains, but they do not lie along the 
road I mention. Horrible deserts exist, but in this case the 
most fertile parts of Afghanistan mark the route. In one 
word, there is no barrier at all between the Russians and the 
English, except such as we ourselves may try and create, and 
interpose to check the advance of the Cossack. 

Let me put the matter more plainly in the shape of a parable. 

A certain man stood at the junction of two roads: one, a 
level railway, along which, in the distance, could be seen a 
locomotive advancing, and the other a winding post road 


160 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 

which disappeared over a lofty hill. Seeing him standing 
on the metals, people shouted to the man to beware of the 
advancing train. Blit the man refused to look along the 
line; he kept his gaze fixed on the old post road, and 
replied, “I can see no stage-coach coming over the moun¬ 
tain ; I don’t believe in your warnings.” And so he stood 
obstinately on the "metals, refusing to move, until the train 
came up and cut him to pieces. 

Such has been the attitude of England and her statesmen 
in regard to the Russian advance upon India. That advance 
was formerly through Orenburg and the deserts of Central 
Asia. "When English statesmen looked in those days towards 
the advancing Cossack, they gazed at Cabul and the lofty 
Hindoo Koosh in its rear. There was a barrier then. But since 
1869 the Russians have been advancing in another direction. 
They have been rattling along the almost level road from the 
Caspian to Candahar. Still, with woeful perversity, English 
statesmen have refused to divert their gaze from the old 
mountain road, and have kept looking at Cabul, when they 
ought to have been watching Herat. To-day, they are 
beginning to glance in the right direction, but unless they 
rid themselves of all the old-fashioned notions about the 
Afghans and the Afghan barrier, the Russians will smash 
their way into India. 

In discussing the Russo-Indian question, politicians fre¬ 
quently quote the opinions expressed by Wellington in 1842, 
and by Lawrence and others in 1860-70^ when Russia was 
conquering the deserts of Turkestan. They might just as 
well quote the Talmud. All the conditions have changed 
since those opinions were expressed; everything has been 
turned topsy-turvy in Afghanistan and Central Asia, and the 
authorities cited for passing party purposes by shallow poli¬ 
ticians would be the first to disown the erroneous applica¬ 
tion of those opinions if they were alive to-day* 


THE FUTURE OF THE AFGHAN BARRIER. 1GI 


To the Russian official or officer who lias made the journey 
of 3,000 miles to get from St. Petersburg to the gates of 
Herat, what is the trumpery 549 miles of easy road inter¬ 
vening between him and the Pisliin outposts ? The Herat- 
Candahar region may be a barrier to politicians who have 
passed their lives in babble and barleycorn measurements, but 
to Russians, accustomed to think no more of a thousand 
miles’ journey than the Londoner does of a ’bus ride to the 
Bank, the distance separating the Cossack from India is 
grotesquely insignificant. 

The defect of the Afghan barrier is this—that it is weakest 
where it ought to be most strong; and we can only remedy 
that defect by taking the organization of the defence into our 
own hands. In plainer words, we ourselves must hold the 
gates of Herat. 

All discussions about the return to Canclahar are beside 
the mark. Wo can occupy Candahar whenever we like, and 
we need not concern ourselves about its security. The whole 
of our efforts must be concentrated upon the safeguarding of 
Herat. 

We must make sure of the bulwarks of Afghanistan. The 
question of the inner defences can be settled at our leisure 
afterwards. 

To hear some people talk, the installation of an Indian 
garrison at Herat would appear to be the most difficult task 
that has ever tested the resources of our Empire. As a 
matter of fact, an army concentrated at Pisliin would simply 
have to march 400 odd miles to get to Herat, and that by a 
broad waggon road. To a nation that has just sent, in face 
of fearful obstacles, a force from Cairo to Khartoum (1,500 
miles), such an expedition should be relatively a common 
place enterprise. Ten thousand Indian troops, aided by 
tribal levies, would be all that would be needed for the 
moment to safeguard the Key of India. The real difficulty 

11 


162 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


consists, not in getting those troops there, but in making 
sure that Russia will not issue an ultimatum forbidding 
their advance. 

It may be opportune to repeat what transpired during a 
discussion I had with Professor Martens on the subject in 
1882. The connection of Professor Martens with the Russian 
Foreign Office is well known, and some of his utterances 
appeared to me, at the time, so fraught with warning, that I 
printed them in italics. I give the conversation and my 
comment just as I published it in 1882, # and I think it will 
be found to possess significance of an undoubted character at 
the present moment. 

The conversation was upon the future of Afghanistan. I 
mentioned that General Annenkoff had said, “ Take Afghani¬ 
stan, for sake of peace.” 

“ Rut Professor Martens declared that England would not 
be able to annex Afghanistan without Russia's permission , or 
as he more delicately put it, ‘ without informing her first of 
her intentions; ’ while as to Herat , he said that Russia would 
view an English occupation of the place with displeasure. 

“ He would not allow that we enjoyed supremacy in 
Afghanistan; nor yet that we could regard it as a second 
Bokhara. He said Afghanistan was an independent state, 
and a neutral one; and, with reference to Lord Hartington’s 
declaration last year, ‘ that England would not allow any 
Power to interfere with the internal and external affairs of 
Afghanistan,’ which I quoted, to show what our Government 
thought of Russian pretensions, he said that the declaration 
was contrary to the views which Russia and England diplo¬ 
matically expressed upon the matter, previous to the Marquis’s 
speech. He would not agree that the Afghan war had can- 

“The Russian Advance towards India: Conversations with Russian 
Statesmen and Generals on the Central Asian Question.” London : Sampson 
Low and Co,, 1882, page 207. 



THE FUTURE OF THE AFGHAN BARRIER. 163 


celled those views. ‘Herat,’lie said, ‘is quite as important 
to Russia as to England. If it is the Key of India it is also 
the Key of Central Asia. If we were there we could threaten 
you in India: if you were there you could threaten us in 
Central Asia.’ 

“This opinion was expressed also by Baron Jomini, one of 
the Under-Secretaries of State at the Russian Foreign Office, 
to Lord DufFerin in 1879. "Writing on July 16th in that 
year, he states that Baron Jomini said to him: ‘Although 
we don’t intend to go to Merv, or to do anything which may 
be interpreted as a menace to England, you must not deceive 
yourself, for the result of our present proceedings ’ ( i.e ., the 
operations of General Lazareff for conquering and annexing 
Akhal) ‘ will be to furnish us with a base of operations against 
England hereafter, should the British Government, by the occu¬ 
pation of Herat, threaten our present position in Central Asia’ 

“Professor Martens would not admit that Herat was as 
much a part of Afghanistan as Cabul or Candahar, and 
thought that Persia ought to have it. On my pointing out 
what a rotten State Persia was, and how completely it was 
under Russian control, he said that if Russia occupied Herat 
she would make Persia her enemy. My strong dissent from 
this led him to propose that Herat should be made into a sort 
of Switzerland, on the buffer state system, although he had 
previously expressed his disbelief in the possibility of keeping 
up Afghanistan as a buffer between the two empires. I held 
that such a project was impossible with Asiatics, but he con¬ 
tinued to maintain that England should keep her hands off 
the place under any contingencies. 

“As I gathered from him, he maintains Russia’s right to 
annex all the territory up to the Afghan frontier, if the 
nomads provoke her to advance; he holds that Russia should 
also have Afghan Turkestan— i.e., the country between the 
Oxus and the Hindoo Koosh. He considers that Herat ought 

11—2 


164 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


not to be treated as an Afghan possession, and, finally, lie 
insists that the rest of Afghanistan should be looked upon as 
a neutral independent state, in the existence of which Russia 
has as much interest as England. It is needless to point out 
that these opinions cannot but be so many red rags to English 
Russophobists, and that, much as the Professor desires a re¬ 
conciliation between England and Russia, a cessation of the 
Central Asian agitation is impossible while they are main¬ 
tained. - I myself would allow Russia to annex up to Afghan¬ 
istan ; but I would give her to understand that that country 
is English territory, and must not be looked upon as less our 
property than Mysore or Baroda. 

“ I used to think that the claims put forward by the Golod 
and Novoc Vremyct , asserting Russia’s right to treat Afghan¬ 
istan as a. neutral state, and Herat as apart from Afghanistan* 
were merely expressions of Anglophobe feeling. It has sur¬ 
prised me to find them seriously maintained by a person of 
such weight as Professor Martens.” 

Since Russia seized the gates of Herat, the St. Petersburg 
press has repeatedly intimated that she would not allow us to 
occupy and garrison the Key of India. These opinions have 
been treated somewhat heedlessly by the English press. They 
have regarded them simply as ravings of irresponsible journa¬ 
lists. But knowing what I do of the aims of Russian states¬ 
men, and with the warnings of Professor Martens ringing in my 
ears, I cannot but think that the threats of the Russian press 
possess a very serious significance. In my mind I am 
persuaded, that if we allow this frontier complication to 
simmer until Russia masses at Sarakhs and Merv and the 
gates of Herat a more powerful army than Lumsden and the 
Afghans control for the defence of the Key of India, she will 
suddenly throw off the mask and deny our right to send a 
force thither. Hence, if there is to be any advance for the 
defence of Herat, it must be done without delay. 


THE FUTURE OF THE AFGHAN BARRIER. 165 


The present complications are something more than an ob¬ 
stinate controversy about a few miles of frontier. The con¬ 
viction has been deepening in Russia for years that the 
economical depression to which it is a prey can only be dis¬ 
sipated by a solution of the Eastern Question, and that that 
solution is only attainable by taking up such a position on the 
Indian confines as shall compel England to acquiesce in the 
Russian occupation of Armenia and Constantinople. 

Apparently, Russia has now accepted in full the policy of 
General Skobeleff, which, published piecemeal since his death, 
has permeated the army and exercised an extraordinary effect 
in preparing Russia for fresh sacrifices. Let me quote what 
Skobeleff wrote to a Russian diplomatist after his return from 
Geok Tepe, during a rest he was taking on his estate at 
Spasskoe Selo:— 

“ The Expedition of 1880-81, entrusted to me, gave birth 
to the indispensability of creating new relations with Merv, 
Afghanistan, and Persia. It rests beyond doubt that the 
late Emperor would not allow any other influence on the 
Persian frontier but that of Persia. Let us hope that those 
high ideals which lay at the foundation of the late Sovereign’s 
programme will remain the leading ones of the present policy. 
Up to now, our national misfortunes, according to our view, 
have mainly arisen, not from the breadth of our ideas, but 
from the irresolution and changeableness of our political and 
ideal aim of operations. This want of determination, 
hand in hand with financial unscrupulousness, has lain a 
heavy burden on the whole structure of the State. Personally, 
for me the whole Central Asian question is fully palpable 
and clear. If by the aid of it we do not decide in a compara* 
tively short time to take in hand seriously the Eastern 
Question—that is, to dominate the Bosphorus—the fleece 
is not worth the tanning. Sooner or later, Russian 
statesmen will have to ackowledge that Russia must 


166 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT 


rule the Bosphorus. That on this depends not only her 
greatness as a power of the first magnitude, hut also her 
security in a defensive sense, and the corresponding 
development of her manufacturing centres and trade, 
Without a serious demonstration in the direction of India, 
in all probability on the side of Candahar, a war for the 
Balkan peninsula is not to be thought of. It is indispensable 
to maintain in Central Asia, at the c/ates of the corresponding 
theatre of war, a powerful body of troops, fully equipped and 
seriously mobilised. We might give up the whole of Central 
Asia in return for a serious and profitable alliance with 
England, until we had secured those results on the Bosphorus 
above mentioned, since the whole of Central Asia possesses 
for Russia only a temporary political significance. As a 
vestibule to the theatre of war in the event of sharp compli¬ 
cations, similar to those of 1878, the conquered Akhal country 
would serve in conjunction with the exclusive preponderating 
influence ice enjoy in Persia .With the pacifica¬ 

tion of the Akhal Tekke oasis, the widest field of action has 
opened before Russian influence in Afghanistan, whenever 
circumstances require it. Examining the strategical roads 
for the manifestation of this influence, in dependence on the 
results accruing to England from the Afghan war, we are 
bound to come to the conclusion that the principal line of 
operations will rest upon the newly-conquered oasis. The 
late Emperor, in appointing me commander against the 
Turcomans, was pleased to declare, in expressing an opinion 
as to what would be the results of a successful termination of 
the expedition, that lie would not allow on the Persian con¬ 
fines any other preponderating influence except that of Russia. 
Remembering the sacred words of the Emperor, I hastened 
forward to Askabad and proposed that the Atak should be 
vassal to us, and Residents appointed at Meshed, Herat, 
and Merv; and finally, in drawing the frontier, I considered 


THE FUTURE OF THE AFGHAN BARRIER. 1G7 


as a minimum of our demands that we should control 

the mountain passes.What has 

been said above by me does not constitute a new question, 
but luckily the success of the Akhal Tekke expedition 
practically opens to us the possibility of exercising an 
influence on the pliancy of Great Britain in the event of 
fresh complications arising from the Eastern Question. This 
affair, more than any other undertaking, demands kn®wledge 
and prolonged systematic preparations. In support of what 
I have stated, I am happy that I can cpiote an extract from 
the reports of Ellis, the English Ambassador at Teheran (the 
contemporary of Simonitch) to Lord Palmerston in 1835, 
now just published. ‘I have arrived at the deep conviction 
that the British Government cannot in any case allow the 
extension of the dominion of Persia in the direction of 
Afghanistan without absolutely infringing the security of 
our Indian possessions. Persia either does not wish, or can¬ 
not enter into a lasting alliance with Great Britain. Our 
policy for the future ought consequently to be to regard 
Persia not as a rampart protecting India, but as a first parallel, 
from which at a given moment an invasion of India might 
proceed. Every step of Persia towards the East brings Russia 
closer to the gates of India.’ Hero is a revelation to us of 
political ideas, which ought to lie in the future at the funda¬ 
ment, and with which I was guided in all my operations, both 
military as well as those concerning the political frontier line 
of the newly subjugated country.” 

This was published in the Novoe Vremyct last year, on the 
second anniversary of Skobeleff’s death. The gaps in the 
letter represent portions prudently suppressed by that paper. 
If it be carefully read, it will be found to possess fuller signi¬ 
ficance, and contain a more direct bearing on the present 
Russian advance and the present claims, than anything ever 
published in the Russian language, including the stale but 
often quoted will of Peter the Great. 


168 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT 


“ Russia does not want India; she wants the Bosphorus.” 
Such was the declaration of General Soholeff in the Russ a 
few months ago, and it will he seen that his words represent 
very neatly the views of Skobeleff. The terms of peace seem 
simple, and there are certain simple-minded sentimentalists 
who are carried away by the plausibility of 0. K. and urge 
that the British lion should lie down with the Russian bear 
and surrender Constantinople. But I think I shall be able 
to show that the offer is totally hollow, and one which cannot 
be accepted even by the most willing Russophile. 

In the first place, not a single Russian writer has yet de¬ 
fined what the acquisition of “Constantinople” really means. 
Only one thing is certain—Russia does not mean Constanti¬ 
nople itself and nothing more. On the contrary, she wants 
the whole of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles to give her a free 
and uncontrolled passage to the Mediterranean, and the 
amount of territory she would require with the channels she 
leaves open. Now, on the north side of the Bosphorus and 
Dardanelles is European Turkey, nearly as large as Great 
Britain, with 5,275,000 souls (we exclude East Roumelia and 
simply reckon the territory under the direct sway of the 
Porte); and on the south side is Turkey in Asia, larger than 
Germany, France, and Austria combined, with a population 
of 17,000,000. How much of this would Russia want? 
Because, having secured the Bosphorus, we know that she 
would requiro plenty of territory on both sides to protect it 
from attack. 

As regards territory in Europe, Russia has expressed pretty 
plainly her desire to take over all that is left of the Porte’s 
dominions, while, in respect to Asia, it is considered essen¬ 
tial that she should have Armenia, so as to connect Ivars with 
the Bosphorus. Thus, although the 8,000,000 people in the 
immediate vicinity of the Bosphorus, and the 14,000,000 
other subjects of the Sultan located further off do not ask for 


THE FUTURE OF THE AFGHAN BARRIER, 169 


Russian rule, England is requested to surrender the larger pro¬ 
portion of them, because Russia wants an outlet to the Medi¬ 
terranean. On the same grounds, Denmark ought to be also 
surrendered, because the Danes control the exit from the 
Baltic. Kay, there is greater reason for this, because, while 
the annexation of Denmark would affect the interests of only 
2,000,000 people, the annexation of Constantinople would 
interfere directly with the destinies of at least 8,000,000 
people, and indirectly with 14,000,000 more. In a word, 
there can be no Russian acquisition of Constantinople that 
does not carry with it the annexation of a large proportion of 
the Sultan’s territory, and it is well, therefore, that this should 
be clearly borne in mind by those who advocate a bargain 
between Russia and England. 

But, supposing England did surrender Constantinople, 
would India be ever free from attack, as Soboleff implies'? 
Could we safely leave the gates of Herat in Russia’s hands ] 
These are questions to which it is impossible to return an 
affirmative reply. 

In the first place, Russia’s guarantee, verbal or in writing, 
would be no guarantee whatever. To rely upon any diplo¬ 
matic compact would be to put ourselves in a position as bad 
as that of the suburban policeman, who should hand over in a 
dark lane his truncheon and revolver to the captured burglar, 
in return for the scoundrel’s assurance to go quietly to tho 
station. It is not England’s fault, but Russia’s, that there is no 
guarantee Russia jean give us which we can possibly respect. 
But even if we could place more reliance on Russian treaties, 
the expansion of Russia is a factor that would infallibly 
render them in time waste paper. Russia has a frontier line 
across Asia 5,000 miles in length, no single spot of which 
can be regarded as permanent. Starting from the Pacific we 
find that she hankers for the northern part of Corea, regards 
as undetermined by boundary with Manchuria and Mongolia, 


170 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


regrets that she gave hack Kuldja, hopes that she will some 
day have Kashgar, questions the Ameer’s right to rule Afghan 
Turkestan, demands the gates of Herat, keeps open a great 
and growing complication with Persia about the Ivhorassan 
frontier, treats more and more every year the Shah as a depen¬ 
dent sovereign, discusses having some day a port in the Persian 
Gulf, and believes she will be the future mistress of the whole 
of Asia Minor. It may not be Russia’s fault that her frontier 
is nowhere in a condition of rest. 1 will not discuss that 
point, but I do insist that the frontier is one which must 
expand in the future, and in so doing, frequently press on 
our interests. Consequently, the surrender of Constanti¬ 
nople would be of no avail in bringing about a permanent 
peace between the two countries, because there exist a score 
of other loopholes for quarrelling between them. 

It is the recognition, the sorrowful recognition of this, 
that renders me such a resolute opponent of the Russian 
advance into Afghanistan. Were I convinced that the sur¬ 
render of Constantinople would put an end to the conflict 
between the two Empires, I should be the strongest advocate 
of such a concession, for I like Russia. I have many sincere 
friends in the country. I take the deepest interest in its 
progress and expansion, and I should be the last to advocate 
war. Rut I recognise that permanent peace cannot be pur¬ 
chased by any surrender, and it is the consciousness that the 
concessions will only beget fresh demands that causes me to 
insist on the necessity for resisting to the utmost Russia’s 
claim to the gates of Herat. 

However disagreeable the task may be, England has but 
one course open to her. She must insist on the surrender 
of the Afghan points seized, and she must apply herself reso¬ 
lutely to the organisation of the new frontier. Fortunately, 
if the Afghan barrier lies open to Russia, it lies open equally 
to ourselves. The conditions at Herat are totally different 


THE FUTURE OF THE AFGHAN BARRIER. 171 

from those at Cahul. The people are almost devoid of 
fanaticism, they have a traditional feeling in our favour, and 
have already developed a fraternal sentiment since the pre¬ 
sence of the Lumsden mission in their midst. Thus, if by 
friendly arrangement with the Ameer we could maintain a 
force in or near Herat, the measure would be very popular in 
the locality. 

As regards the actual frontier the matter is still easier. Along 
the whole valley of Herat to Kusan, the people dwelling in 
the villages are quiet and well-disposed; north of them, to 
the Russian outposts, there are scarcely any inhabitants at 
all. Thus our outposts would be safe on the Hari Rud side 
of Herat. With regard to the Murghab, immediately north 
of Herat, are the Jemshidis. These I have already described 
as peaceful and friendly; so again are the Sarik Turcomans. 

How for Afghan Turkestan. From Bala Murghab to the 
Oxus the Uzbegs are described by Grodekoff as particularly 
peaceful—too much so, he thinks, as they thereby expose 
themselves to Afghan tyranny. The few Turcomans also 
found are likewise free from turbulence. In this manner a 
very slight Anglo-Afghan cordon would suffice to guard the 
frontier from Persia to the Oxus, and it would effectually 
check Russian designs on Balkh and other foreposts of the 
Hindoo Koosh, as well as screen Herat. 

To the east of Herat are the Hazaras, and south-east the 
Amaks. These are supposed to number collectively 650,000 
souls, and could supply 20,000 or 30,000 horse equal to the 
Turcomans. They are Mongols by stock, and so independent, 
that the Afghans have never been able to bring the former 
totally under subjection. With both, good relations have 
been established by Sir Peter Lumsden, and it is not anti¬ 
cipated by our Indian military experts that they would occa¬ 
sion any trouble, while, being a non-Afghan people, they 
would be a valuable support to our cordon, in the event of 


172 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


any tumult among the Afghans themselves. The Firuzkuhis 
30,000 in number, are another tribe that might render excel 5 
lent assistance. 

Thus, a cordon established along the new frontier would 
have powerful support in its rear, and from Herat to the 
Oxus would bo safe from tribal attack and separated by the 
Hindoo Koosh from the tumults and fanaticism of Cabnl, 
The sole difficulty is the linking of this cordon with our 
position at Quetta, 

The first thing to be remembered is, that we are the practical 
proprietors of the whole of Beluchistan, the present Govern¬ 
ment having established a protectorate over it. It is very 
important to bear this in mind, because it gives us the means 
of establishing communication with Herat, without touching 
Candahar. As a matter of fact, the cordon I have referred 
to could be extended along the Perso-Afghan frontier to East 
Beluchistan, and there join hands with our own military 
forces. It has been pointed out by the highest authority that 
a railway to Herat is feasible from the port of Gwadur, on 
the coast of Beluchistan, and this could be carried up to the 
Key of India without meddling with Candahar, or traversing 
any country held in force by hostile tribes. 

Before Sir Peter Lumsden left England I discussed with 
him this plan, which I had been maturing some time, and 
had only refrained from making public to prevent Russia 
taking timely steps to frustrate it. I based its success upon 
the tranquil character of the North-West and West Afghan 
frontiers, and my views on this point have since been con¬ 
firmed by the correspondence despatched from that region to 
the English and Indian Press. Such a cordon would effec¬ 
tually check any further Russian advance, and it would leave 
untouched Cabul and Candahar, and the districts generally 
of Afghanistan where fanaticism abounds, and the ill-feeling 
engendered by the last war has not yet passed away. 


THE FUTURE OF THE AFGHAN BARRIER. 173 

Of late it lias become known that some such plan had been 
drawn up by the ablest military authorities in India during 
the viceroyalty of the Marquis of Ripon. I cannot help 
thinking that England’s power in India would have been 
stronger to-day, had he attended to this more, and left alone 
such fire-brand questions as the Ilbert Bill. 

Still, it is not too late for its adoption, if it be taken in 
hand before Russia consolidates her position at the gates of 
Herat. If it be left untouched till then, Russia, I am per* 
sttaded, will never allow the English to garrison the North 
West Afghan frontier without making a determined effort to 
prevent it. On this account, it is essential that public opinion 
in this country should be perfectly ripe for the permanent 
tnanniiig of the Afghan frontier with Indian troops, and that 
Russia should feel that Earl Dufferin is backed up, if he 
adopts such a policy, by the patriotic feeling of the entire 
English empire. 

I may add that our military resources in India are quite 
equal to the task, if increased by a few reinforcements from 
home, and that the sole obstacle is, whether the Government 
may not hold back, fearing that public opinion in England is 
not sufficiently advanced for such a forward movement. To 
go into full details of the policy would be to lengthen out a 
book already sufficiently long, and, what is worse, perhaps 
lead to Russian intrigue, in London and on the spot, to 
prevent its realisation. But I have said enough in this 
Volume, in describing the new frontier, to indicate its feasi¬ 
bility ; and India being ready to take the task in hand, in 
conjunction with the Ameer, I venture to express a hope 
that every reader will do his utmost to support the authorities 
at home and in India in accomplishing it. 

With regard to Earl Dufferin, little fear need be enter¬ 
tained that he will prove unequal to the situation. The case, 
however, is different with the Government at home. Mr. 


174 THE RUSSIANS AT THE GATES OF HERAT. 


Gladstone’s Cabinet is notoriously given to making concessions, 
and Russia, well aware of this, is resorting to every artifice 
to squeeze it. Against this evil tendency must be maintained 
a determined struggle. “No surrender! ” must be the motto 
of every Englishman as regards Penjdeh, and “ Hands off! ” 
in respect to Ak Robat, Pul-i-Khisti, and other gates of the 
Key of India. Whether Russia shall win the great camping- 
ground of Herat or be permanently excluded from it, depends 
largely upon you. If you, as one of the public, do not 
manifest a fixed determination to keep Russia out of Herat 
and its gates, the Government will catch the spirit of your 
indifference, and Russia will succeed in realising her demands. 

Let me make the appeal, therefore, that if you thoroughly 
appreciate the importance of preserving Herat, you will not 
simply content yourself with silent acquiescence. The press 
and the platform are open to you to give publicity to your 
support, and if you have means you can help in the dis¬ 
semination of pamphlets to keep alive public feeling to the 
danger of the Russian advance. I have never rejected any¬ 
one’s co-operation in the sacred task of safeguarding India 
from the menace from the North, and gratefully place on 
record the encouragement which has been given to my efforts 
by the sympathy conveyed to me by my readers. With your 
help I may be able to do more than I am doing; without it I 
remain just as determined as ever not to allow Russia to have 
Herat while my tongue and my pen can prevent it. 

England has no aggressive aims in Central Asia; she lias 
no desire to meddle with anybody beyond the Afghan border. 
Afghanistan itself she strongly wishes should remain inde¬ 
pendent, and to render it so she’ has been paying the 
Ameer a subsidy of £120,000 a year to consolidate his 
authority. With that independence I am as little disposed to 
meddle as any member of the Manchester school can be, but 
I hold that it can never be preserved by the simple process of 





Lord Lufferin, 






































, • , •- 
































THE FUTURE OF THE AFGHAN BARRIER. 177 


tossing £10,000 a month across our Indian frontier, and exer¬ 
cising no control over its expenditure. The Ameer, if a clever 
man in some respects, is not everywhere in his dominions a 
popular sovereign, and only Englishmen who are ignorant of 
Afghan affairs, or refuse to watch them, can deny that there 
is only one step between his rule and anarchy. If he were 
to die to-morrow we have no guarantee that a period of tur¬ 
bulence 'would not prevail at Cabul, and Russia has pretty 
plainly informed us that if wq do not maintain order through¬ 
out Afghanistan, she will not bind herself not to advance 
across the^border to restore it. In other words, an outbreak 
at Herat would be a sufficient excuse for the occupation of 
the Key of India. 

Again, if Englishmen are blind to the fact, Russia is not, 
that the tribal differences existing in Afghanistan render the 
country peculiarly well adapted for gradual disintegration. 
The notion of a united Afghanistan is fit only for the nur¬ 
sery. The Afghans are conquerors and foreigners in the 
whole of the country north of the Hindoo Koosh, from 
Balkli to Herat. Their control of Herat, as Russia is con¬ 
stantly reminding us, is quite of recent origin, and even yet 
they have not succeeded in imposing their rule over all the 
clans dwelling between Herat and Cabul. If Russia retains 
her present position, she will be admirably placed for in¬ 
triguing with the non-Afghan peoples, and detaching them 
one by one from the Ameer’s rule. The Jemsliidis would be 
operated upon first, then the Uzbegs, afterwards the Haza- 
raks and Aimaks, and so on, with very little trouble. Unless 
we screen these tribes by an Indian cordon, Russia will be 
able to eat her way into the heart of Afghanistan. 

Tho rampart of the Sulieman range is as much a delusion 
as the Paropamisus hills. It used to be thought that a great 
mountain barrier ran parallel with the Indus, and that it was 
only pierced by three or four cracks—the Khyber, Bolan, and 

Gomul passes. That myth was exploded during the last war, 

12 








178 THE RUSSIANS A1 THE GATES OF HERAT. 


a regular survey having disclosed the existence of 289 passes, 
every one capable of being traversed by camels. In the Dera 
Ismail Khan district alone there are 92 passes; and in excess 
of the 289 already mapped on the Indo-Afghan frontier, there 
are 75 more, leading from Beluchistan into India. To control 
all these passes in time of war, against an army located at 
Candahar, would be impossible. Among military men to-day 
there is no difference of opinion that we must go forward and 
take up a strong position to control the few roads debouching 
in the direction of this range. In other words we must assume 

O 

charge of the Key of India. 

England has to face this fact, and it is no use shirking it. 
If she does not pervade Afghanistan Russia will, and the 
weakest part of the barrier being precisely that which is 
closest to Komaroff and Alikhanolf, there is obviously every 
facility for the slow sapping intrigue, at which Russia is such 
an adept. We have already ourselves broken the isolation 
of Afghanistan by despatching officers and troops to Herat' 
Let us develop that intercourse, and upon it base the erection 
of such a barrier along the Russo-Afghan frontier, as will 
effectually secure Afghanistan from the corroding influence of 
Russia, and afford a means of consolidating our own. There 
need be no serious annexations, no meddling with the sus¬ 
ceptibilities or power of Ameer or Afghan. Once such a de¬ 
fence is organised, in the Ameer’s name, for the Key of India 
we can rapidly put in order India itself. Rut, it must be 
clearly understood, this can be done only by ousting Russia 
from the gates of Herat she lias seized, and by peremptorily 
rejecting her demands for the remainder. Otherwise a wedge 
will have been successfully driven in from Merv and Sarakhs 
to the great camping ground of Herat, and it will require an 
enormous expenditure to defend the broken frontier from 
such treacherous coups cle main, as the recent seizure of Merv 
and the dash to the bulwarks of the Key of India. 

the end. 


THE RDSSO-INDIAN QUESTION. 


OPINION OF ARMINIUS VAMBERY. 

“ The leading authority of the English Press on the Central 
Asian Question is Charles Marvin, a man of iron industry, who 
lias wielded his comprehensive knowledge of the region in such a 
manner as to render eminent service to his country.” 


OPINION OF PROFESSOR A. H. KEANE. 

“Charles Marvin is unquestionably the leading authority of the 
day on all matters appertaining to the operations of Russia in 
Central Asia. He has no equal, and can hardly be said to have 
anv rival.” 


OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 

“All Charles Marvin’s works on Central Asia were taken to 
Afghanistan for purposes of consultation by the Lumsden Mission 
for the delimitation of the Russian frontier.”— Life. 

“ Charles Marvin has already issued 12 books and pamphlets 
on Central Asia, containing 3,000 pages of letterpress, and more 
than 100 maps and illustrations. This is not bad for an author 
who is only 30, especially if it be noted that all his books have 
been published since 1879, and that in the interval he has made 
four journeys to Russia, and further produced hundreds of arti¬ 
cles. We know of no litterateur who has come to the front so 
speedily as Mr. Marvin ; he has sprung into celebrity almost at a 
bound .”—Evening News. 

“ Charles Marvin has undertaken a mission. Let the plain fact 
be avowed at once—a mission which lie regards in the light of a 
sacred duty, which he feels himself specially qualified to fulfil, 
and which, in any case, he has prosecuted with extraordinary zeal 
and vigour since his first appearance in the literary world some 
six years ago. During this brief interval a perfect torrent of all 
sorts of writings—books, pamphlets, lectures, newspaper articles 
—has flowed from his ready pen, all inspired by one idea, all 
aiming at a thorough elucidation of the Central Asian Question.” 
— Academy. 





THE ROSSO-IHDIAN QUESTION. 

/ 

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.— Continued, 

“ Of all tlie journalists in London there are few more indefati¬ 
gable than Mr. Charles Marvin, whose energy is as illimitable as 
his determination to convince the world that Russia’s advance 
eastward is a deadly menace to our Indian Empire.”— Pall Mall 
Gazette. 

“ The well-known writer upon Central Asia, and indisputably 
the first authority in England on all matters concerning the opera¬ 
tions of Russia in that region.”— Allgemeine Correspondent . 

“ Charles Marvin is a remarkable traveller and great writer on 
the politics of Russia and England in the East.”— Tifiis Kavlcaz. 

“ Charles Marvin has long been the leading authority on Ceil- 
tral Asia.”— Overland Mail. 

“ Charles Marvin is the first authority of the day on Central 
Asia.”— Berlin Zeitung. 

“ Mr. Marvin must be congratulated for the rapidity with which 
he has made his way. Since 1880 he has achieved European fame 
as the author of some of the best books that have been published 
on the Central Asian Question. There is no doubt whatever that 
he is a great authority on the question, and that his knowledge of 
it would put many so-called British statesman to shame. I ven¬ 
ture to suggest that when the Government have time to remember 
the existence of Russia, they might do worse than utilize the ser¬ 
vices and the accomplishments of Mr. Marvin.”— Figaro. 

“ With regard to the Central Asian Question, Mr. Marvin has 
been many years doing the British public a national service in 
exposing the dangers of each Russian advance.”— Public Opinion. 

“ Charles Marvin, more than any other Englishman, has per¬ 
sistently urged the adoption of a vigorous policy, with a view to 
averting the encroachments of Russia in Central Asia.”— Western 
Mail , March 8th, 1884. 

“At a meeting of the Portsmouth Working Men’s Club, Feb 
29tli, 1884, a resolution was passed expressing hearty sympathy 
with Charles Marvin in his works and lectures on Central Asia, 
and trusting that he would be supported by Conservative working 
men throughout England.”— Portsmouth Times, March 12th, 1884. 















' 














' 


























































Mme. PHILIPPA, 

273 REGENT STREET, W. 

(Near the Polytechnic Institution), 

MODISTE. 


SPECIALTIES: 

PERFECT-FITTING COSTUMES. 
ARTISTIC MILLINERY. 
LATEST FASHIONS. 

MOITRNIBTO. 

CHARGES MODERATE. 


Established 1851. 

BIRKBECK BANK. 

SOUTHAMPTON BUILDINGS, CHANCERY LANE. 

THREE per CENT. INTEREST allowed on DEPOSITS, repayable on demand. 

TWO per CENT. INTEREST on CURRENT ACCOUNTS calculated on the minimum 
monthly balances, when not drawn below ,650. 

The Bank undertakes for its Customers, free of Charge, the Custody of Deeds, Writings, 
and other Securities and Valuables; the collection of Bills of Exchange, Dividends, and 
Coupons; and the purchase and sale of Stocks, Shares, and Annuities. Letters of Credit and 
Circular Notes issued. 

THE BIRKBECK ALMANACK, with full particulars, post free, on application. 

FRANCIS RAVENSCROFT, Ma?iager. 


THE BIRKBECK BUILDING SOCIETY’S ANNUAL RECEIPTS 

EXCEED FIVE MILLIONS. 

ZTOW TO PURCHASE A HOUSE FOR TWO GUINEAS PER 
MONTH , with Immediate Possession and No Rent to Pay. Apply at 
the Office of the BIRKBECK BUILDING SOCIETY. 29 Southampton Build¬ 
ings, Chancery Lane. 

TTOW TO PURCHASE A PLOT OF LAND FOR FIVE SHILLINGS 
11 PER MONTH, with Immediate Possession eitfur for Building or Gar¬ 
dening purposes. Apply at the Office of the BIRKBECK FREEHOLD LAND 
SOCIETY, as above. 

The BIRKBECK ALMANAC, with full particulars,, on application. 

FRANCIS RAVENSCROFT, Manager, 













SAMPSON & CO., 

Sole Makers of the Surplice Shirt. 



6 for 45s. 


Calcutta Flam] el 
Shirts, 10s. 6d. 
each. 

Will not shrink 

Pyjama Sleeping 
Suits, with 
Feet attached. 

Gauze-Merino 
Hosiery. 



268 and 270 Oxford Street, London, W. 

BROWN AND GREEN S KITCHENERS. 



Gold and Silver Medals 
for Smoke-Consuming 
Grates and Kitcheners. 

With Oven and Side Boiler. 
With Two Ovens Boiler. 

Prices & Illustrations on Application. 

These KITCHENERS roast 
in front, and are unequalled 
for economy&convenience. 

The Patent Self-acting 1 
Dampers SAVE COAL and 
Ventilate the Kitchener. 



Brown and Green’s Portable Gera Stores 

BURN A SURPRISINGLY SMALL QUANTITY OF FUEL. 
They are recommended for small families, and as an 
auxiliary for larger establishments. Highly approved. 
Bake well. Require no setting. Cure smoky chimneys. 

Gold Medal at the Healtheries, 1884. 

EROWN & GREEN, Limited, 
69 & 71 Finsbury Pavement, E.C. 








































































































